Awakened Entrepreneur

Life Vision Poster

There is a poster hanging above my desk. I created it during a Stanford continuing education class that was designed to help us create a life vision based on our personal and professional goals. In this poster, we cut out pictures from magazines that reflected what made us happy and what we wanted to do with our lives. Some of the pictures on my poster reflect peak oil, electric vehicles, starting a business, business school, racing school, surfing, exercising, my wife, and my kids.

Businessman

For most of my life I have been very focused on starting, running and selling businesses and didn't give much thought to sustainability. But even then, I questioned conventional business wisdom. For instance, while I have always accepted the axiom that businesses need to grow or die, I still wondered why this was true.

Dilemma

After I sold my last business, I went to work for the company that bought it and was eager to use my experience to help this company grow. Instead, I often felt stifled. For instance, many times when I presented a new idea, I was told: "No, that won't work, and here's why". I struggled for almost 3 years to make a difference but never made much progress, so I decided to retire.

Adrift in Retirement

Retirement wasn't as fun as I thought. While I really enjoyed spending more time with my family and being able to surf and develop a Ruby on Rails wiki, I felt adrift -  as if I really should be doing something more. The Stanford class helped me realize that I was happiest as an entrepreneur rather than working for someone else, but I absolutely didn't want to start another hi-tech company - that just felt so shallow.  And I didn't want to start my next company alone; instead I wanted to start it with friends who shared similar ideals and passions.

Sustainability Epiphany

While browsing at an airport bookstore, I serendipitously picked up "The Long Emergency". It really shook me up because Kunstler paints a grim picture of oil production declining so fast that the world won't even have enough oil left to save itself by building alternative energy devices. This galvanized me to do more research on peak oil and led me to the belief that the end of easy oil is near and making the transition to sustainable energy sources will be the biggest challenge humankind will ever face. Helping the world make this transition became my goal in life.

Finding Meaning and Direction

I am excited about the Presidio Sustainable MBA program not only because of the new ways of doing business that I will learn in the classroom, but also because of the passionate people I will be immersed with and the engrossing conversations we will have. I expect that my time here will catapult a group of us into starting another business, and that business will be run in a sustainable way and will be meaningful because it will help the world move away from non-sustainable fossil fuel use.