Professional Background
I recently completed a 6 month contract with Fifth Third Bancorp as a Data Engineer.
Prior to that I worked for Total Quality
Logistics for 9 years, spending the first 7 years on the sales floor
before diving in to IT.
Why Entrepreneurship?
Eleven or twelve years ago I took a small business/entrepreneurship
course during my undergraduate studies at UK. While I don’t remember
many specifics, I will never forget the professor, an older gentleman
who was approaching the end of a lifetime career with the Kentucky
Secretary of State, his job focusing on commercial businesses. Towards
the end of the semester, he posed a question to class, have any of us
thought about what our first job after graduation would be? Even though
it was an upper-level class of mostly seniors, surprisingly the room was
silent including myself. After a time he broke the silence and said
“Ninety percent of you in this room will begin their careers in sales
somewhere, whether it is for a global conglomerate, a local business
down the street here in Lexington, or your own start up.” At the time, I
wanted desperately to be in the 10%, in the minority, not making a
living convincing others what I have to offer is the best and there is
no sense in doing business with the rest. Alas, 3 months later, on
spring break of my senior year, I was accepting a sales position at
Total Quality Logistics. Come to find out, not only was I good at it,
but I became enticed to the rush of it, closing business and fostering
relationships.
Anecdotes aside, entrepreneurship is sales; selling investors and
stakeholders your idea and business plan are solid and worthy of
funding, selling potential employees to join the endeavor, selling the
promise to family that the long nights and chaotic schedules won’t be in
vain, and of course selling the idea to consumers what you are offering
is worth their time, consideration, and money.
While I have sales experience and technology experience, I do not
have technology experience in the startup realm. I am hoping to get a
feel for technology landscape in this area. With the dawn of
Infrastructure as a Service and Software as a Service is it less complex
to navigate a good idea to market? Are there better avenues than IaaS
and SaaS to launch a startup? How do we truly engage with an
increasingly over-stimulated audience to promote what is being
launched?
