So last Friday my business partner, Rich Hanks, me and our company, Mindshare were finalists in the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award. It was our second trip as finalists and we were feeling pretty good about ourselves and the company. We've had some great success and worked with great people so we felt, based upon our "real" results, we had a good chance.
We invited the whole company to the Gala and we had a great time. Then the awards came - but not to us! We missed again(I can't say lost, not in my dictionary) this year to a hugely funded VC behemoth called Move Networks. They have had over $58 million in VC funding and I think they are just starting to burn other people's money.
Now I've been on that train before at a previous company (see Bluestep) were we went through $20 million of someone else's money and I promise it feels much different when it's your own money! Maybe that's why I'm a bit of a 'grumpy gus' right now. I'm sure Move Networks will become a great success story for the State of Utah someday(perhaps once they stop burning?), but I don't personally see them as Entrepreneurs at least not in the same light as a 'boot-strapped' company.
Us boot-strapped Entrepreneurs are a bit strange, apt to weird and bizarre decision-making that results in frustrations to normal number crunchers(ask my partner for details). But we are an honest lot. We look after our own and we make sure those that help us succeed, succeed as well. Having done the VC company I personally can never go back. From my perspective (I'm sure there are exceptions) the VC's always are taken care of and the founder too, after that it's scraps for the rats to split.
So what is the take-away from round two as finalists? Entrepreneur I say, that's what it is! I am invigorated to win now, not for the sake of an award that goes to the guy who burns the most but for succeeding with my friends. I want to win, I want my company to win, I want my employees and friends to win more so now than ever before.
I'm ready for the next chapter of success in business. For some reason I think I thought I had arrived. Now I know I'm just beginning.
How's that spelled again? ENTREPRENEUR. Yeah, that's it.
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As a sponsor of the program, I wish I could understand better the mechanics of the decisions made in the judges' room. One wonders, "What if X company hadn't sold?" or "How many award recipients were actually founders or very early entrants of the business?"
Most of the finalists really deserved to be there on Friday. I guess going forward the only thing that should be done would be to do a better job finding higher-quality nominees, since that's probably the only way to transition the mentality towards true ENTREPRENEURSHIP (spell that!) and away from the distractions of glamour or money.
We will happily accept recommendations of high-quality nominees to support from anyone, since often we don't know about a company until after the glam or $ (which is often deceiving anyway - we usually don't know the true financial condition of the companies we're nominating).
John, you rock. Your company rocks - and several people said so on Friday, and will say so going forward.
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