The power of the polymath
The shift f rom Bollywood glam to the restaurant grind and eventually to tech may seem jarring to outsiders, but to Ray Walia it’s logical.
Walia, now CEO of Vancouver- based Launch Academy, spent part of his childhood backstage while Bollywood stars performed at concerts promoted by his father. In his late teens in 1998, he bought his first Dairy Queen franchise.
While running DQ, Walia let a friend experiment with technology that would send coupons to customers’ phones via Bluetooth. “That blew me away. I started thinking about so many different opportunities to engage with customers before they get to the cash register.”
The reaction was an early sign in his development as a “multi- potentialite” — a person who harnesses multiple skills or pursues a variety of often- distinct passions simultaneously. Emily Wapnick, the author of How to Be Everything: A Guide for Those Who ( Still) Don’t Know What They Want to Be When They Grow Up, released last month, and the person who coined the term, says entrepreneurship tends to attract people who fit this mould.
In 2007, just before Walia unloaded his restaurant holdings, he was pushing entertainment content to shoppers’ phones as they walked through aisles of stores such as HMV. Much like the concerts, it was a way to engage an audience. The same year, he obtained his CMA certification, tapping into his affinity for data crunching.
Those moves foreshadowed his current enthusiasm for helping tech startups get off the ground, both through Launch Academy, a not- for- profit hub he started in 2012, and his venture capital firm, Victory Square. He still taps his event management skills, too.
“My background in data analytics plays a large role in how I mentor and advise companies,” Walia says. “And then I bring in my entertainment experience to the table when I’m working with my portfolio companies.”
The concept of multi-potentiality might be new to Walia, but there are more familiar terms — renaissance person and polymath are some others; Wapnick helps them engage all their interests in a productive and meaningful way.
High- profile examples of multi- potentialites might include Tesla founder Elon Musk, with his proclivity for building companies that embody some of his passion projects, such as transportation and the environment. Another is Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, a Wall Street alumni who, like Musk, has a fixation on space travel, but distinct from him has built his company under one roof.
“I think being multi- potentialled is not only an asset, but at some level probably essential to successful entrepreneurship now,” says Paula Allen, vice- president of research and integrative solutions at Morneau Shepell. “If you’re linear in your thinking and deep in one area of expertise, the likelihood of coming up with new or creative solutions is lower.”
Wapnick, whose TED talk has been viewed nearly four million times, said multipotential it es often get advice to focus on something specific, even though that may go against their nature. “They don’t get to express the breadth of who they are.”
That means multi-potentialite entrepreneurs are more inclined to test out more ideas, making the ability to change gears when one idea doesn’t pan out essential, says Allen, whose expertise is in workplace health and productivity.
In the early stages of a startup when teams are small, having a handle on most functions, from operations to client management, is necessary, Allen adds, not only to keep costs down but also to “move forward fast.”
Wapnick says she meets founders whose businesses are more multi-faceted than others, but one commonality is the risk of spreading too thin and the struggle to manage time.
A remedy to that is building a team, Allen says. “Just because you have the high potential, high interest, it doesn’t mean you’re always right in every area.”
Wapnick only allows herself three “priority projects” at a time. Walia attributes part of his success at managing his divided attention to the people around him. “I’m able to manage my time sufficiently in between to make sure I’m giving the proper amount of time to each team to help them on executing on the bigger picture.“
Allen says another risk for a multi-potentialite is falling prey to zeal in the pursuit of ideas without following through, especially in the “fail fast, learn fast” realm of startups. The way to avoid that, she says, is to commit to a vision and acknowledge the difference between a rough patch and a dead end.
“You might end up with a whole bunch of first- level startups and never get past it, because you do need to have that kind of discipline to stick with something to see it through.”