10. Your First Successful Product May Not Be What You Expected

Chesonis told the audience that one of his companies -- a high-frequency power supply company -- thought it was supposed to build components for LED lighting, and Chesonis and his team spent a year and a half developing the technology. But he said the company's first product, which will debut this summer, is a very small laptop adapter.

Another of his companies thought it would be in the automotive businesses, but is now churning out its first set of projects for the oil and gas industry, as well as the aerospace defense industry. Chesonis said he used to see this in the telecom space during his Paetec days, when the products that customers really wanted tended to be just a little bit different than what had originally been thought up on the whiteboard, he said.

"You think you know what your first product is, but you'll never know where it will end up going," he said. "Keep your mind open."