NYT Small Business Summit: Serial Entrepreneurs On How They Did It

Yesterday, at the Hilton on Sixth Avenue in New York, a large group of budding and current entrepreneurs and small business owners converged together to rub shoulders, exchange experiences, make some contacts and listen to advice from those they aspire to emulate. 

The New York Times Small Business Summit—the reason behind this gathering—included panels on entrepreneurship, social media and marketing, building a brand, innovation in tough economic times, and need-to-knows to grow one’s business. Speakers at the event included Jerry Greenfield, co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s, Shiv Singh, who heads up digital strategy for Pepsi, and Robin Chase, co-founder of Zipcar.

I attended a panel called Serial Entrepreneurs, moderated by Penny Pickett, associate administrator of entrepreneurial development at the US Small Business Association; and featuring Alex Mashinsky, who has founded 7 companies including car and limousine rental agency Limores; Colleen Payne-Nabors, who has founded six companies, including Mobile Cardiac Imaging; and Mitchell York, who founded Executive to Entrepreneur (E2E) Coaching and runs a catering business Maui Wowi.

A lot of the panel was about how the three “serial entrepreneurs” on stage had set up their businesses, and the trials and hardships they went through; some bits were more interesting than others.

Mashinsky related a story about how, after he had made it as an entrepreneur and was successfully running a telecommunications business, he was contacted by Esther Dyson, who asked him to meet with a “young Russian immigrant” who was trying to start his own business in America, similar to what Mashinsky had done years ago.

After meeting with the youngster in question, Mashinsky decided his idea—a searchable index of library material, or if this didn’t work a way to search the Internet at large—was totally redundant and would never work. The boy was Sergey Brin, who later went on to be co-founder of Google.

Mashinsky went on to talk about his own experiences in trying to raise venture capital, and how difficult the process can be, even for someone established He advises that a budding entrepreneur pitch her idea to a VC, if she can get a meeting, because they are a great resource to bounce one’s ideas off of. 

However Pickett, who has worked in venture capital, strongly disagreed, stating that she would not pitch an idea to a VC before its absolutely ready because you’re unlikely to get a second meeting if they’re unimpressed. Her advice is to think about viable business models for the product or service. 

All the panelists seemed to agree that validating one’s business idea-–figuring out whether there’s a market for it—is step one in the process to getting funded.  

Payne-Nabors also had an interesting story to tell -- her own. She started her company, Mobile Cardiac Imaging, in order to provide heart patients in rural Oklahoma access to nuclear medicine closer to their homes. “My idea was to put a nuclear medicine department in the back of a truck,” she recounts. 

The initial funding came from her sister and her own bank account. Gradually, she expanded her company every year, staying within her field, until eventually she founded six companies in total. “The power of not knowing what you can’t do is incredible,” she said.

When asked about whether, given the current economic situation, now is the right time to start a business, York pointed out that there isn’t a lot of external funding readily available. He advises starting an information based business, rather than one centered on a physical product, and making it as finely focused as possible.