From the desk of Herb Sih, Managing Partner, Think Big Partners
“The years teach much which the
days never know.”- Ralph Waldo Emerson
The changing of seasons is one of Mother Nature’s
greatest inventions. As autumn leaves fall and tree branches begin to bare, it
is a natural time to reflect on the year that has passed. It is often during
this time, and the natural tendency to slow down as the weather becomes colder,
that some of life’s greatest revelations become self-evident.
“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” - Soren Kierkegaard
Every year, we start winding down Think Big Partners
activities during November, forcing many critical decisions to be reckoned with
in December. These decisions will shape our business, both operationally (day
to day) and longer term in pursuit of our vision of economic prosperity for our
community and country, based on successful entrepreneurship and its many proven
rewards. By helping entrepreneurs build profitable
companies, bridging the gaps between innovation and commercialization of good
ideas worth doing, or maximizing economic growth opportunities for cities based
on their rich, unique history of industrial success, we contemplate lessons
learned and ways we can work smarter in the future.
The process of winding down doesn’t mean we stop working.
Work is sometimes an illusion. Being busy doesn’t always mean getting things
done. Activity should not be confused with progress, and should not be measured
by the number of emails sent, meetings attended or arbitrary tasks checked off
your list as completed. But the act of taking things off your list…that is very
different. This is, in fact, a productive activity beyond measure. To be truly
productive and be able to live a smarter life going forward, we must be willing
to release ourselves from our self-imposed obligations of the past.
“It's not what you look at that
matters, it's what you see.” - Henry David Thoreau
If you take the time to examine things, you often can
learn more than you bargained for. It has been said that the truth is already
know, it just has to be revealed. Take the time to look for these revelations.
Reflecting on the past year, we think we see things in
our world of running a hybrid technology focused business incubator, startup accelerator
and collaborative coworking space for entrepreneurs a bit more clearly than
ever before. Perhaps it is because we have crossed Malcolm Gladwell’s
proverbial “10,000 hours” mark of experience for true mastery. Maybe it is
because entrepreneurship and innovation seem to be “the new black”, and everywhere
you look there are opportunities ripe for observation. Or maybe it is simply because we now look at
things just a bit differently, based on our newfound experience and quiet
lessons learned along the way. Some of these lessons were quite obvious. Some
were very subtle. A few were even painful. But no matter how we arrived at
these revelations, all were invaluable.
With these lessons, we see things clearer than ever
before.
" The only source of knowledge is experience.” - Albert Einstein
We originally launched Think Big Partners in October
2010. But truth be told, we actually started in spring of 2009. It seems like a
long 4 years since that time.
Back in May 2009, Tyler Prochnow and I took “B” office
space and decided to re-learn all the things we hated about starting a business
that we had forgotten about over the previous 10 years. Things like waiting for the cable guy to show
up in their 4 hour window. Ordering a VoIP phone and not being able to properly
hook it up for weeks. The isolation of working nearly alone, where you lack feedback
for your ideas and contact with talented, diverse people that can give it to
you. We had to tap back into our past
forgotten experiences to gain the knowledge we were look for.
In 2009, Tyler had just come off the successful sale of
Kansas City’s arena league football team (he was the original founder and
pulled off a near miracle getting them to launch on time), and I had just sold
my interest in a call center that I helped launch. Tyler had been practicing
law for the bulk of his adult life, and I had been in the investment space for
more than a decade, concurrent to some my career as an entrepreneur. Tyler had
won awards and recognition as an outstanding attorney, and I had received
recognition for being a co-founder of an Inc. 500 company in the marketing space.
And while we had 2 very different backgrounds, we had one common experience. This
experience was that it was really, REALLY hard to successfully take a good idea
and turn it into a sustainable business.
Good ideas are a dime a dozen. That is not to say that it
is easy to launch a new venture, but what gets really hard is taking a new
venture from bright, shiny enthusiastic object stage to grind it out, not so
fun when you miss dinner but must get it done stage. Getting your first 10
customers and your first real taste of revenue is where it gets tricky. And
that is the part that we love the most, as we always seem to enjoy a good
challenge, especially one that we can keep score in.
Our collective experiences, along with those of our
immensely talented team members and partners, have equipped us for the next
chapter in our book. We are very excited knowing exactly what we need to do,
what we need to build and how we are going to execute this game plan. We are
grateful for the partnerships we have created, both public and private, that
will empower us to be very powerful allies for our entrepreneurs, startups,
ideas, commercialization partners, big and small companies, investment
partners, communities and country as we go into the new year.
These realizations have all come as the result of slowing
down, to see things a bit more clearly, and to tune into the wisdom that is all
around if you just pay attention. We are thankful for the wisdom we have
gained, and more so for the opportunity to do something with it in 2014.
Stay
tuned…and thanks for reading.
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