Thoughts on Enabling the Entrepreneur

My first thought about this conference is that it has a great theme—because entrepreneurs do need enabling. And, by gum, I’m an entrepreneur now…in two days I’ll be celebrating the official launch of my first company, a professional business and technology blog called Xconomy. Our mission is simple: to cover the innovation community and ecosystem in the Greater Boston area, to raise awareness about innovation in New England, whether it’s at startups, big companies, or elsewhere—and to bring people from different fields together around our events and parties. We raised a little over $1 million to do it, all from angel investors, and we made our public debut (our soft launch) at the end of June. But what a process…I counted 131 versions of my powerpoint…I didn’t feel too enabled when putting them all together.

I do, however, have one hopefully enabling thought for my fellow entrepreneurs out there. The single best thing about being a would-be entrepreneur was being open about my ideas and sharing them with lots of folks—whether they were friends, potential investors or underwriters, or general advisors—and then really listening to what they had to say and incorporating their ideas to make my idea better. I think many entrepreneurs either don’t share enough, or, if they hear something they don’t want to hear, they get defensive. Open up, listen, evolve—and your odds of success go way up.

I am also wondering why, after being a dinner keynoter last year, I am relegated to the blogsophere this year? But then I figured that I was being enabled, as an entrepreneur. So, thanks to the organizers for having me here, wherever I am—Bob Buderi