The Sacramento Entrepreneurship Academy held their 27th annual spring showcase Wednesday evening. In front of an audience of distinguished business leaders from Moneta Ventures, Five Star Bank, Moss Adams, Stoel Rives, JPMorgan Chase, SMUD, Weintraub Tobin, and more, Sacramento entrepreneur and founder of Sleep Train, Dale Carlsen shared some insights on entrepreneurship and lessons learned on his journey in his keynote address.
Seven Entrepreneurship Insights
- Entrepreneurship is seeing a problem and finding a solution.
- There is nothing more powerful than ownership. Sleep Train grew 8X after implementing its employee ownership program.
- Businesses need to understand the value of giving back to the community . If your model isn’t good for the community, you need to rethink your model.
- This region is coming together for huge success. All of the components are there.
- What we need in this region is to create the environment for innovation and entrepreneurship.
- Disruption happens because there’s a problem in the industry.
- Telling your story is the most important advertising you can do.
Seven Lessons-learned:
- Learn to fail
- Learn from failures
- Understand failure
- Learn fast
- Learn to pivot
- Learn when your model isn’t right
- If you want to be successful, surround yourself with good people and make them successful
