Afterlife Of An Entrepreneur

With the successful start-up sold and cash in the bank, what’s next for an entrepreneur?

Collette McKenna Parker

June 18, 2008

S ix years ago Tom Body retired for one whole week.

He had exited from Airgate PCS, a company that he co-founded and took public for $350 million in 1999.

His retirement was well-deserved; he had been in the business of starting and running successful companies for 20 years. But apparently, the life of leisure wasn't what it was cracked up to be.

"I was retired for one week before our VC partner came to me with another idea," says Body. That idea lead to his present ventures, Wirefree Partners, which raised $150 million in venture capital; and Strata8, which has so far raised $8 million.

"In the afterlife of a serial entrepreneur, there is only the ‘next deal," says Body.

This is good news for entrepreneurs and the investors who love them. But what about the other options for life after the start-up?

1.  Going To Work For Corporate America

There's an irony about entrepreneurs entering corporate America – large companies would love to hire individuals that can string together an idea and get an economic result in a relatively modest amount of time – but most entrepreneurs wouldn't dream of it.

"Even if they came from a big company before their own business, entrepreneurs don't go back into large companies," says Joel Koblentz, senior partner of The Koblentz Group, a leadership advisory firm which build boards of advisors and performs executive searches for large companies.

"I feel that it would be very difficult for me to work for a large company at this stage of my business career," says Body, agreeing with Koblentz's conclusion.

Entrepreneurs are change agents, and bigger companies are under tremendous pressure to continually innovate, explains Koblentz, but their corporate cultures typically do not support change. So large companies need a change agent to come in and push that.

"They say they want someone to push change, even though the cultures don't really support it," says Koblentz, who he has seen very few successes in this area.

Consider the life of an entrepreneur: freedom to create, to work when and where they are most productive, and to set their own priorities. Corporate cultures don't support those freedoms unless there is a separate, special unit that is set up specifically for non-traditional methods – basically just to get brains together.

One example of this is Steamboat Ventures, which is the venture capital arm of The Walt Disney Company. Steamboat Ventures was designed to look at ideas in media and entertainment; Disney has left them alone and they have had great success, according to Koblentz.

"If you see those kinds of units, innovative labs where creativity is a huge driving force –t hat's where the entrepreneur generally can play," he says. But if you tell them to develop some software, develop quarterly reports, stand by the water coolers and discuss the Super Bowl, it's only a matter of time before their resignation. "We're seeing few, if any, individuals who can do that," says Koblentz.

"We just haven't seen those people enter back into corporate life. There's not going to be a career as an accountant. It doesn't give them enough space. It's a different mentality."

2.  Going To Advise Corporate America

Now maybe entrepreneurs won't do well trying to shake things up with the 9-to-5, a cubicle and a middle management title, but there is a great potential for success as a member of the board of directors of these larger corporations.

These are the same companies that recognize the need for change, but changes are easier to accept at the director's level. Board members today are paying especially close attention to enterprise risk – which basically means how the company might fail, whether it's changing technology, the management growing old or other matters. And it's easier to discuss innovation as part of enterprise risk than it is inside the company's culture.

"More and more boards are putting an emphasis on innovation and technology as a competitive advantage. If you think about boards as old fuddy-duddy men and women, that's not so much any more," says Koblentz. "A couple boards that we work with have specifically asked for younger members."

Companies and board of directors are looking for maturity, acuity and judgment to help govern those companies. But they also want people who bring an understanding of innovation and technology and how to apply innovation and technology to gain a competitive advantage.

3.  Staying In Start-Up America

Sometimes an entrepreneur can do both. Tom Body is still in the start-up world, but has found the time to chair the Robinson College of Business Board of Advisors at Georgia State.

But typically, entrepreneurs return to their comfort zone – a life of uncertainty, late nights and grueling finance rounds.

"Entrepreneurs get back into it because they fail at retirement," says Koblentz. "They begin to get antsy and they want to do it again. I don't know anyone who's retired."

In Body's life as a serial entrepreneur, he has learned his strengths and he knows exactly where he wants to be and where he wants to go.

"If I am still in good shape in 10 years, I will be starting a new company, unless of course I am not out in the ‘Bone Yard,'" says Body.

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Collette McKenna Parker has been an Atlanta business writer for more than 10 years, and started her career as associate editor of Business to Business magazine. She was managing editor of Catalyst before becoming a full-time freelance writer and has written for dozens of local and national publications, including several years as a Time magazine southeast business stringer.

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