16 minute read
ON ENTREPRENEURSHIP
StC Entrepreneurs Create, Bear Risk, Pivot and Stay Nimble
ALUMNI REFLECT ON THE HIGHS AND LOWS, CHALLENGES AND REWARDS
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By Kathleen Thomas
ENTREPRENEUR: an individual who creates a new business, bearing most of the risks and enjoying most of the rewards.
[Merriam-Webster]
— Trip Davis ‘86
Trip Davis ‘86 (inset) rights a capsized Laser in 1982.
At the start of each entrepreneurship class he teaches, Trip Davis ’86 displays a 1982 photo of a towheaded 14-year-old righting a capsized Laser. He offers no context, but asks students how they might respond. He likens the photo of himself, taken the summer after eighth grade in Deltaville, Virginia, to the entrepreneurial journey. “It’s not a question of if you’re going to capsize, it’s a question of when and how often,” said the Dartmouth College adjunct professor. “You get back in the cockpit and start working, shift by shift, trying to get back in sync.” The entrepreneurial spirit often launches early.
Davis, who grew up on St. Christopher’s Road, had an early gig washing cars. With a hose and bucket in hand, he knocked on neighbors’ doors seeking work and learned a valuable lesson: establish pricing up front. “We worked on one car that was super-dirty, and the nice woman thought she was being quite generous giving each of us $1,” he said. Later, he founded Davis Marine Services, doing boat handiwork during his high school and college summers. After graduate school, he founded two travel technology companies before joining the University of Virginia’s McIntire’s Galant Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship as co-faculty director while serving as the Darden School of Business senior associate dean. In 2013, he was named executive director of his alma mater Dartmouth’s Office of Entrepreneurship & Technology Transfer, and transitioned in 2016 to become chief executive at FreshAir Sensor LLC, a startup that provides smoking and vaping detection technology.
A 2021 Wall Street Journal article explores how, despite stress, long hours and inevitable lows, entrepreneurs still report consistently higher rates of happiness than wage-earning employees and say positives outweigh the negatives, particularly in job satisfaction. StC alumni entrepreneurs interviewed for this story concur. “I’ll do this forever,” said John Street ’88, owner of Epitome Networks, which provides technology-based communication solutions. “I don’t know anything different. You live and breathe it. You’re so committed because there’s so much at stake.”
Others are, like Street, deeply invested. While their passion is fueled by purpose and autonomy, it can lead to overwork and stress. “You never get away from it, “ Street said. “Some of my best ideas have come at 3 in the morning.”
Marco De León ’08, who founded Rip Van, a company that makes and distributes a Danish waffle, said the workload has been heavy, usually working all but a few hours on Sundays. Entrepreneurship is often glorified, in keeping with the social media construct that everything is perfect. “Anyone who’s been in it a while will say the opposite, if they’re honest,” De León said. “The world is not as welcoming or consistent as you get in a place like St. Christopher’s, where everyone is following the rulebook. It’s a great journey to be on, but it’s not for everyone.”
Some entrepreneurs are big dreamers and create a product people don’t even know they need. Many however, identify a problem and create a company to fix it.
Focused on the Chesapeake Bay, where the bottom is littered with abandoned objects, Wade Blackwood ’93 checks both boxes trying to get a crab pot with a biodegradable escape hatch to market. He designed the pot so that, if abandoned, crabs can escape, and other crustaceans, oysters and fish can use it as shelter. Blackwood continues to push the concept, despite heated resistance from Chesapeake Bay watermen. Breaking habits for the better good is tough. “People are always resistant to change, no matter what,” he said.
Because revenue streams can be challenging, some pursue entrepreneurship as a side hustle. Blackwood works for First Earth|2030, seeking financial opportunities in companies that provide an ecological lift in land, water and energy, while working on the side to bring his crab pot to market. A Different Kind of Mindset
While roadblocks and risks run high, the entrepreneurial mindset is different.
Kevin Isaacs ’08 sees ownership as less risky. For one, he can’t be fired. Secondly, he can dictate the course.
Isaacs spent years preparing to buy a company from its retiring owners before being ghosted. A few months later, the sellers tried to reopen negotiations but, his trust shattered, Isaacs declined. With the prospect of a more traditional career looming, he instead opted to start his own venture. Just before depleting the last of funds from graduate school loans, he secured his first client, which provided the capital needed to hire one employee to manage the work. His company, Tribunus Health, which expands access to health care by securing providers’ contracts with insurance companies, grew from there, now with 24 employees serving clients across the country.
Every entrepreneur interviewed for this story hit road bumps, many almost fatal to their business.
After graduating from college, Ted Price ’86 pulled the plug on working for a medical startup to create a video game. He floundered from what he called a lack of “programming prowess,” but soon connected with a student from his alma
Kevin Isaacs ’08
“You have to have a temperament to deal with fluctuations. I’m not very risk averse. This is never something that was scary to me. I knew what I stood to lose and where I would be if I lost it, and I’m still very employable.” — Kevin Isaacs ’08
mater, Princeton University, who joined Price, adding the programming firepower needed to get the game to market. Still, publishers repeatedly rejected the concept, and Price teetered on bankruptcy before a switch to PlayStation, Sony’s fledgling game console, which provided the needed lift. Sony was encouraging small developers, such as Price’s Insomniac Games Inc., to provide content. A long list of Insomniac story-driven games successfully followed suit, including “Spyro the Dragon,” “Ratchet & Clank” and Marvel’s “Spider-Man,” with the company racking up sales of more than 100 million units since.
Price sold Insomniac in 2019 to Sony Corp., but continues to work there, now focused on the leadership team that seeks to anticipate problems as the games and technology constantly evolve. A priority for him is the corporate culture: “Today, I’m making sure the team stays healthy and doesn’t burn out, given the challenges of creating these big, complex works of art.”
Waffle-maker De León said resource constraints have always been the biggest hurdle for Rip Van. Without the buffer of a larger company, an entrepreneur’s mistakes hurt more, but they also have greater freedom to innovate.
COVID shuttered offices that made up more than half of Rip Van’s business in 2020. Now though, the company boasts sales four times greater than before the pandemic. Rip Van has diversified from its original Danish waffle product to lowersugar snacks, with products distributed in more than 20,000 locations across the country, including Costco, Starbucks and Whole Foods Market.
An Alignment of Values
Most studies of entrepreneurs have focused on autonomy as a key motivator, with owners driven to create a company built on values that mirror their own.
LEARNING FROM EXPERIENCE
Tips From John Whitlock ’75
As a young lawyer in Mineral, Virginia, John Whitlock ’75 worked with his father, who announced one day, while reading the daily newspaper, that he wanted to buy a personal computer for his office, a novel development at the time. Whitlock researched options and ended up befriending the computer salesman, who confided he wanted to start his own company. The recent graduate of University of Richmond Law School said he’d be happy to help his new friend get started.
The effort soon went awry when the entrepreneur-wannabe, a top computer salesman, turned out to be a not-so-great manager of people or accounting. Whitlock ended up taking the company over and growing it to an 850-employee systems integration firm called The Whitlock Group, focused on videoconferencing, audiovisual and multimedia display technologies. He sold out to a private equity firm in 2019, just months before COVID shuttered the world. “It was quite a ride,” he said reflectively. “I always say I wish I could start again knowing what I know now. Learning all that stuff was expensive.“ Here’s some commonsense tips from Whitlock, looking back on his experiences.
Enjoy the relationships. “There are all kinds of interesting, highenergy people that you find in the entrepreneurial space.”
Every day, be prepared to face problems that no one else can fix. “Sometimes you solve the unsolvable problem. That makes you feel really good.”
Be a good listener and hire great people. “You have to be comfortable hiring people who know more than you and are better than you. Then you have to listen to them.”
Hire a good accountant and a good lawyer. “You have to read the documents and the contracts. If you don’t understand every word, you have to ask questions. I can’t tell you how many people get into trouble with that. Law school teaches you to look for what’s not in there. That’s a hard trick to learn.”
Have a realistic plan for revenue and growth. “Make sure you have enough sources of capital to actually get there.”
Hire slow and fire fast. “When you’re bringing someone in, really dig and really interview. On the flip side, if you know someone is a problem, it’s better for them and for you to move on. I probably could have been more judicious in some of the people we brought on and more expeditious in the people we let go.”
Commit to a lifetime of learning. “You have to stay sharp. You always have to be on the edge of what’s new. Even if it’s a traditional business, you have to be knowledgeable and smart.”
“Fulfillment really comes through charting your own journey and working with teams to accomplish things that seem especially challenging or interesting. I would say categorically the fulfillment does not come through financial terms. If you’re not enjoying the journey, you should get out.” — Trip Davis ’86
Sandy Williamson ’79, who worked in banking and consulting for 12 years, faced frustrations in the corporate world in the ’80s and ’90s. “There were a lot of image requirements that I didn’t think were necessary, a lot of posturing, a lot of politicking and positioning, a lot of fluff versus how do you get the job done.” At 37, he co-founded CapTech Consulting, which started out helping businesses load corporate data on the internet. Through the years, its services diversified, and the company has grown to 1,200 employees with more than $200 million in annual sales, making the Inc. 5000 list 15 times.
Every alumnus interviewed for this story noted team building as one of the biggest rewards of the journey.
Last Thanksgiving at Tribunus Health, one of Isaacs’ employees sent out a companywide email expressing appreciation for their colleagues, the positive work environment and providing a service that matters. Other employees chimed in. “That was a really happy moment.” Isaacs said.
Game developer Price’s mission from the get-go has been to foster collaboration: “There’s very little more exciting than people working together to come up with a cool, unexpected solution to a problem and everyone being energized by that.” In addition, he also finds reward in creating products that have lasting and positive impact. Today’s fully interactive photorealistic games connect people, particularly in isolating moments such as the COVID pandemic, and have become a leading form of cultural expression, Price said. Getting Started
For many, the tradition runs in families.
John Street of Epitome Networks grew up working for his father, who owned a copier company, and got the entrepreneurship bug from him. In the past 23 years, he has grown three companies, shifting his focus with changing market conditions. “You should never be comfortable,” he said. “You could be making all the money in the world, but it doesn’t mean you’ll be making it tomorrow.”
Street started out with a water purification business, which he sold after four years, then bought an audiovisual company, which evolved into Epitome Networks. In the first six months, almost every employee quit, but Street remained undeterred, switching his focus to conference room technology and electronic replacements for blackboards that he sold to schools, including St. Christopher’s. After 10 years, he foresaw that technology applications in the classroom were almost saturated, so he pivoted, expanding into structured cable, card swipes, security cameras and commercial phone systems. In 2020, the company made a comeback with audiovisuals, including wireless work, which parlayed into putting 5G technology on
John Street ‘88
Sandy Williamson ‘79 credits his job as sports editor for the 1979 Raps & Taps yearbook for jumpstarting his career. He noted that contrary to what’s often written about entrepreneurial egos, humility is key. “I am humbled by my luck of getting a good team together at the right time,” he said. Ted Price ‘86 sold Insomniac in 2019 to Sony Corp., but continues to work there, now focused on the leadership team that seeks to anticipate problems as the games and technology constantly evolve.
Ben White ’07 runs his own photography business out of his studio in Richmond’s Fan District. Here he uses flags and diffusers to manipulate light hitting glass bottles for one of his clients. “By heavily diffusing the light sources, I am able to create a softened light, giving a sense of intentionality to the visual of an inanimate object,” White said.
IN THE TRENCHES
Insight from Other Alumni
Values rank high. Rip Van founder Marco De León ’08 said he and his team meet regularly to discuss how the company is performing against its values, such as partnership and gold standard. “They’re a guiding post for us as we’re operating and as we’re growing and adding new team members,” he said.
Transparency is paramount. Since 2014, Insomniac founder Ted Price ’86 takes time every day to answer a question by email from an employee, which is distributed companywide. “It helps to keep people connected,” he said. “If you’re all sharing knowledge and sharing openly, it fosters a great sense of trust.”
You don’t do it alone. In the past 25 years at Cap Tech, founder Sandy Williamson ’79 has groomed two management teams and now serves as company chairman. ”You build a team that has your same passion for getting results.… I like developing people.”
Mastering company skill sets aren’t critical: “The only prerequisite is empathy, like a high EQ,” said Kevin Isaacs ’08 of Tribunus Health. “You can hire everything else.”
cellphone towers, now the main revenue stream for Epitome Networks, which employs 140 and serves 15 states. While Street said he’s not techie, he’s diligent about operational processes and financial modeling, providing a platform for savvy engineers and installers to do their work.
– John Street ’88
Three generations of the Benjamin Briscoe Whites are entrepreneurs. Benjamin Jr. ’50 built and managed apartment complexes in Virginia and North Carolina; Benjamin Briscoe White III ‘76 (Briscoe) devoted his career to growing and selling plants and herbs; and Benjamin Briscoe White IV ’07 (Ben) runs a photography business.
Ben White Jr.’s career in real estate seemingly nurtured an inborn competitive spirit. “I don’t want to take advantage of anyone, but if anyone is going to win, it might as well be me,” he said.
His son Briscoe White started out managing apartments for his dad after college, but found himself miserable and 40 pounds overweight. He read about a burgeoning trend in landscaping and hired a local nursery to design a plan for an apartment complex he managed. His boss dubbed the expense a waste, but the project jump-started White’s ultimate calling. He left the family business to work for greenhouse retailers and, in 1985, he and his wife Kenan opened the Growers Exchange, a Carytown fixture for 20 years until the big box retailers moved in. The couple shuttered, knowing their business would dry up, and relocated in 2008 to family property in Charles City, ultimately focusing on growing and selling herbs online.
Overall, White found contentment blending his lifestyle with his vocation. “I opted out for a kinder, gentler life. My employees are
Ben White Jr. ‘50
expected to perform their duties, but there’s a human factor. If someone has an issue, it doesn’t mean they get dumped. There’s some understanding there. That’s what I was looking for.”
Meanwhile, his son Ben White finds fulfillment in the creative pursuit of photography, living and working out of studio space on West Broad Street. He focuses on event work and commercial gigs, but his passion is portraiture, particularly using surreal, curated backdrops. “The end goal is a means of connecting with others on another level,” he said.
Jon Wright ’03, a cybersecurity lawyer who grew up in a hunting family, has also managed to marry passion and business. In addition to working for a pharmaceutical company, he runs the Pocono Browns deer camp in Pennsylvania, a cabin adjacent to more than 8,000 acres of public land teeming with wildlife. He seeks to share the peace and fulfillment he finds spending time in nature, and he’s particularly keen on providing hunting opportunities to people of color. Risk Mitigation
Many people believe entrepreneurs take huge risks. Dartmouth’s Davis said entrepreneurs are actually excellent risk mitigators. “It’s a very different mentality than a big company with a big budget,” he said.
Briscoe White’s decision to heat his Charles City greenhouse by installing a wood-burning stove in lieu of an expensive heating system is a case in point. He kept the fire burning seven months a year for 10 years. When storms hit, he awoke at 3 a.m. donning boots, overalls and fur hat to trek to the greenhouse and pitch wood to keep his plants alive. “I was willing to do it to not have any expenses, so any extra money could go for the website or marketing, not overhead of the crop,” he said. Four years ago, White relocated to Tech Park in Sandston, where his team of four to 15, which fluctuates with growing seasons, works in 17,500 square feet of state-of-the-art greenhouses and temperatures are controlled electronically.
Meanwhile, De León spends much of his time figuring ways to minimize Rip Van’s risks, pondering questions like, “How do we get this outsize return with less input, whether it’s financial or time? How do I improve? How does the business or system go to the next level?”
Hope for the Future
Entrepreneurs who think outside the box and bring new ideas and services to market are critical to America’s future. Entrepreneurship is a huge but often unrecognized component of economic growth. “For hundreds of years, American entrepreneurs have shaped the world economy through disruption and innovation – from lightbulbs and telephones to medicine, mobile and more,” Davis said. “Our new businesses on Main Street and in high tech create jobs and improve lives. We’re the ultimate competitors, working relentlessly to challenge the status quo and find better ways.”
Briscoe White ‘76
Jon Wright ‘03 with his sons Caleb (2), Eli (4) and Ben (6)
