With our Owen-Owned Alumni Entrepreneur Spotlight launching this fall, I have been reflecting on the concept of an entrepreneur, and what I’ve learned about this unique aspect of the business ecology since my time at Owen.
In my experience, an entrepreneur is someone who has an appetite for risk, growth, mission, and culture that is a higher calling or even a lifestyle. Entrepreneurship is a skill that can be developed over time with experience and exposure, but it is also a mindset that contributes to building a culture of ideas and innovative thinking. There are natural entrepreneurs no doubt, but many evolve with experience.
A lot has changed in this field over the past twenty-five years since I took one of the first entrepreneurship classes offered at Owen. Taught by Michael Leahy, it was a very popular class for 2nd year students and was run like an early version of Shark Tank. Teams worked to develop ideas to generate investments and after a voting process, a winning team was selected.
Entrepreneurship has now become mainstream. With the availability of private equity, hedge funds, SPAC, and individual investors, we have seen an acceleration of deep pockets and good ideas. Obvious examples are driven by technology such as Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Facebook, as well as emerging companies like Magic Leap, Snowflake, and Fiverr.
To be sure, the COVID-19 pandemic has shifted what works in today’s world, creating a crucible that consumes some ideas and catapults others. Firms reliant on face-to-face engagement are more vulnerable, while those with social distancing built-in are thriving. Over the past year, we have seen Zoom become both a noun and a verb—like Uber or Xerox. Netflix shares a similar distinction with the aforementioned companies, and like many before, opportunities have been missed. In September 2000, Netflix offered itself for $50M to Blockbuster, the CEO at the time responded, “The dot-com hysteria is completely overblown.” Netflix today has a market cap approaching $300 billion dollars.
Bringing an entrepreneurial mindset into your leadership style or business approach requires multiple skills: learning agility, progressive vision, fearlessness, confidence, and sheer will.
Bringing an entrepreneurial mindset into your leadership style or business approach requires multiple skills: learning agility, progressive vision, fearlessness, confidence, and sheer will. Even more effective entrepreneurs think about relationships, curiosity, humility, and diversity of thought; like a swim team, everyone gets in the pool and every trait will be used eventually. Owen offers the opportunity to explore these skills—from accounting to organizational design; and each tool has a purpose and a utility.
Indeed, many of our Owen classmates went on to great success as serial entrepreneurs—constantly iterating and showing significant grit. Confirmation.com, the world’s leading platform for quickly and securely verifying sensitive financial data, was founded by an Owen graduate, Brian Fox, MBA’01. Confirmation was named to Inc. magazine’s prestigious “Inc. 5000” list for ten years in a row, and ultimately sold to Thompson Reuters. Brian is one of many successful leaders launched from Vanderbilt.
At its core, entrepreneurship is part of the fabric of global business and Vanderbilt. It is the DNA of capitalism and is fundamental to our society. Owen continues to create the right environment and give students the tools to access and develop an entrepreneurial mindset. I look forward to celebrating our Owen-Owned entrepreneurs with our alumni, where quality of character, teamwork and commitment to community and new ideas are nurtured and advanced.