ESPN me baby!
Stuart Evey, the founder of ESPN, spoke at school today. Even though I know little about ESPN other than the fact that my cable provider gives me no less than six flavors of ESPN, I do respect it. Whoever thought that someone would pay for up to six channels that show nothing but sports is genius. Today, I listened to that genius tell his story.
It turns out that Stuart is a UW alum and is mentoring the amateur sports startup A to Z Sports. The founder of A-Z got Stuart to give a speech on entrepreneurship and how he turned a simple idea into a multi-billion dollar company. Stuart was great. I could listen to him all day. He was approachable, funny, and he realizes that success is a combination of great ideas, the right people, timing, and luck. He knew he had something good and he stuck with it but there were long periods of time when he didn’t know what was going to happen.
I like listening to entrepreneurs more than I used to. By nature, I am a very risk-averse person. I gamble when I go to Vegas, but this involves blowing maybe $40 at the $2 minimum craps tables downtown. In my entrepreneurship class, we listen to entrepreneurs talk about why they started their own business. Very few of them had a specific goal in mind and instead they acted on opportunities. I would like to think that I could just do that, but I think I would have to be much more financially secure to go through with something like that. I totally respect it, but I just don’t have the balls for that kind of work.