Elway advice for entrepreneurs: “Don’t be afraid to fail”
Denver Startup Week wrapped up Friday, and folks attending the week-long event had the opportunity to visit more than 350 panels and special attractions and benefit from the wisdom imparted there.
The largest free entrepreneurship event in the world, according to organizers, the eighth annual Startup Week brought together speakers from backgrounds ranging from an NFL team executive to a director of diversity and inclusion for a Fortune 100 electronics company.
Whether they were speaking as part of a panel or sharing some thoughts between sessions, here are five pieces of advice for aspiring entrepreneurs from some of the pros:
John Elway, general manager of the Denver Broncos, Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterback, restaurant and car dealership owner
“Here is the one thing that I think really gives you an opportunity to be successful and that is, don’t be afraid to fail. I’m just telling you, I’ve failed many, many times, but you’ve got to wipe yourself off and get back up. I think if you’re afraid to fail, then you never really find out how far you can go.”
Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari Corp. and Chuck E. Cheese Pizza Time Theater, father of the modern video game industry “Start by creating yourself a job. And try to do your first company as something that you can fund out of your back pocket. Atari started with $500, and in some ways that scarcity of capital gives your company really good discipline.”
Yolánda Chase, director of Work(place) Forward — global inclusion and diversity at Centennial-based Arrow Electronics
“To me, the most important thing is, as you’re building and starting your business and crafting your internal framework … that you’re really intertwining this thought process and this mindfulness around culture. You want that culture, that inclusivity, that diversity mind-set, that parity piece to exude through every single one of the in
dividuals who works for you and right through the delivery process.” Alicia Jessip, founder of the Women in Tech Denver Meetup group, inclusion and diversity manager at full-stack technology services company TEKsystems
“I think the big thing I would recommend is thinking about what it is that I am trying to launch and the market that I am trying to reach, and understanding the demographics of that market and having someone sit down with me and help me understand and articulate, ‘How do I best reach out to that market accordingly?’
“Having a team that’s going to help impact that is a really great way to embark on making sure that you’re being as accessible
and as dynamic as possible with your product.” Paul Szurek, president and CEO of Denver-based CoreSite, a real estate investment trust that owns data centers
“The primary requirement is to make sure you are solving an important customer need or problem. The startups that tend to fail have, they kind of have shortsightedness. They fall in love with their own idea because they think it’s something that they individually would really grow to like and want.
“Sometimes they think they are saving the world with it. But they haven’t really done the work and research to understand if they are solving a meaningful problem or meeting a meaningful need for a very broad number of people.”