Yesterday, we hosted Taj and Eddie George at a speaker series called “Eliminating the Box,” where they shared what it means to break out of the box of celebrity and become entrepreneurs.
“I think that anyone who has an idea and puts one foot in front of the other and strives for it is an entrepreneur,” said Taj “You can’t put an entrepreneur in a box, and if you do, you’re wrong.”
Yesterday, I was thrilled to read the Nashville Business Journal announcement that the Nashville area ranked among the top 15 of SmartAsset’s best cities for women entrepreneurs.
Native Nashvillian Mike Shmerling wasn’t always interested in entrepreneurship. Born on Church Street, he started his career 43 years ago in accounting, but by his 30s, he made the leap into entrepreneurship and in 2007 was invited to co-chair an initiative for an entrepreneurial hub in Nashville. The idea was to build the Nashville entrepreneurial community; Healthcare, music, hospitality, and tech were booming by then, but Nashville was more than just a business hub -- it had a reputation for helping others and collaborating
You could say that being involved with supporting the Nashville Entrepreneur Center runs in the family for Stuart McWhorter: His father, Clayton McWhorter, was the founding Board Chair for the NEC and the namesake of The McWhorter Circle annual giving society. Stuart himself previously served as the NEC’s CEO, too.
On November 17, we hosted Jim McKelvey, a serial entrepreneur, inventor, philanthropist, artist, and author of The Innovation Stack: Building an Unbeatable Business One Crazy Idea at a Time. He is the cofounder of Square and served as the chairman of its board until 2010, and still serves on the Board of Directors. In 2011, his iconic card reader design was inducted into the Museum of Modern Art.
Linda Rebrovick never envisioned she would start her own company, let alone spend time serving as a director on multiple boards. Looking back, however, it’s clear that the seeds were sown early, as she began taking on intrapreneurship roles earlier in her career, such as leading business units within companies like IBM and Dell. Linda would go on to be the CEO of start-up, Consensus Point, a Nashville-based prediction market and market intelligence technology firm. After that, she was presented with numerous opportunities to serve on boards and recognized that many lacked diversity.
John Ingram knows a lot about business. Having worked for decades in different roles in his family’s company, Ingram Industries, he’s seen what it takes to successfully run a large, profitable organization. But his perspective isn’t only that of someone who leads an established, mature company—he also identifies with the entrepreneurial spirit, whether that’s through disruption and reinvention in the publishing industry or through his efforts to bring a Major League Soccer team to Nashville.
“I always say I was New Orleans raised but Nashville made,” said Mignon Francois, Founder and CEO of The Cupcake Collection and one of our EC board members.“This business couldn’t have been done anywhere else. Nashville is where businesses are born. I went to New Orleans to see if my business had legs and I’ve learned that it has legs to walk around the entire country.”