\u201cEver tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.\u201d \u2014 Samuel Beckett<\/p>\n
Andrew Poon, \u201917, had an idea \u2014 not for the first time \u2014 of how to add value to people\u2019s lives and revenue to his bank account. An entrepreneur by nature, he had launched his first business, a nonprofit, while still an undergraduate student in NC State University\u2019s industrial engineering program. He started a more successful venture shortly before he enrolled in a master\u2019s degree program at Poole School of Management to learn global innovation management. And in his final semester, he and a friend had another brainstorm.<\/p>\n
Poon had learned from each of his prior ventures. This time, he decided to leverage the learning curve of other start-up founders. He pulled together a slide deck and his courage, polished his presentation and strode into a networking event hosted by the NC State Entrepreneurship Clinic.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou always hear how the most successful people had a mentor who invested in them,\u201d Poon said. \u201cI was hoping to find someone to invest in me, to be honest with me, and to challenge me into growing as an entrepreneur.\u201d<\/p>\n
Finding a mentor is harder than it seems. People who have accomplished great success don\u2019t have a lot of free time. Lewis Sheats, the executive director of the NC State Entrepreneurship Clinic and a serial entrepreneur himself, made it easier for those in need of mentoring to find someone willing to help. He invited a few dozen Triangle entrepreneurs to a series of four gatherings held at a local restaurant during the spring 2017 semester. A few dozen students, aspiring business owners all, joined them. Using a speed-dating format, the potential mentors and mentees learned what each had to offer.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s invaluable, if you are a serious entrepreneur, to have that experience,\u201d Poon said.<\/p>\n
At the event, Poon met Eric Huang, founder and chief executive officer of Prometheus Group, a 150-employee asset management software company acquired last year by a private equity firm. Poon asked for a meeting, and Huang set one up for seven in the morning. At that early hour, Poon explained his idea for a long-distance ride-sharing platform. Huang asked questions about how Poon planned to build the business and program the service, then he stated flat-out that he didn\u2019t like the idea.<\/p>\n
But he went on to explain why. That proved to be a valuable gift to Poon.<\/p>\n
\u201cI agreed with him on the spot,\u201d said Poon, who had had the same misgivings. \u201cI needed to hear it from someone else.\u201d<\/p>\n
What should have been the end turned out to be the beginning.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe didn\u2019t like our idea,\u201d Poon said, \u201cbut he liked that we were the kind of people who go out and do things. We weren\u2019t afraid to fail. That\u2019s the most important thing for entrepreneurship, and it\u2019s something you can\u2019t teach.\u201d<\/p>\n
Huang had had an idea for a business simmering on a back burner in his brain for a few years. He hadn\u2019t found anyone he wanted to work with on it until he met Poon. He suggested that he and Poon partner to make it happen. He laid out his idea and what success would look like, and Poon agreed.<\/p>\n
\u201cI walked out of his office not with an offer for a job but with an offer for a company,\u201d Poon said.<\/p>\n
In the new venture, Real E Notes, Poon and Brandon Staton are creating a checklist for real estate agents to add more value to their communication with clients. For instance, real estate agents might walk into a house and notice that a pet has left scratches in the floor. The agent would run the numbers to ascertain how much it would cost to refurbish or whether the floor could be refinished at all. By compiling such information on a number of areas of potential repairs and renovations, the agent could generate a report to give clients a better idea of the true cost of buying the house and fixing it up.<\/p>\n
Simultaneously, Poon and Staton are working on another project called Shipmint, a logistics platform specializing in obtaining the best small-package shipping rates for volume shippers.<\/p>\n
Poon and Staton have their offices in the same building in Raleigh as Prometheus, and Huang keeps an open-door policy for any questions the young entrepreneurs have. Once a week, in their standing Friday meetings, Huang checks in to make sure Poon\u2019s and Staton\u2019s fledgling companies are on the right trajectory.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery day is a new adventure, a new challenge,\u201d Poon said. \u201cEvery day, I\u2019m learning something new.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now that the company has started down a path toward success, Poon has returned to the Entrepreneurship Clinic networking meetings, this time as a potential mentor. One piece of advice he wants to impart is to urge aspiring entrepreneurs to make the most of the networking opportunities by coming with an idea.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou need a tangible objective to get entrepreneurs to work on it with you,\u201d he said. \u201cTalk to people and be willing to hear their feedback.\u201d<\/p>\n
He wants to pass along what he has learned from Huang about how to recognize a good idea, and how to think about it from a business perspective.<\/p>\n
Another bit of wisdom he learned firsthand: \u201cPut yourself in a position to be lucky.\u201d<\/p>\n
Poon considers himself lucky to have met Huang. But it was not random. Poon continually put himself out to connect with people and build his network. He came up with ideas and worked them through to present a feasible concept. He was willing to try, and to risk failure, and to try again.<\/p>\n
\u201cEric saw something in me that was worth taking a risk on,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Coming to the networking events as a mentor is much less stressful than when he went as a potential mentee, Poon said. Now he gets to listen more, he doesn\u2019t have to spend time preparing and he can indulge in the joy of empowering people to capture their potential.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can draw from the energy of people who want to go out there and create something,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Mentoring has shaped Poon\u2019s career; shaped his life, really, because he views his career as a trajectory, more than an end goal. Every day, he wakes up wanting to be better than the day before. He offers a few final points:<\/p>\n
\u2013 Written by Nancy E. Oates for Poole College<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false,"raw":"\u201cEver tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.\u201d \u2014 Samuel Beckett\r\n\r\nAndrew Poon, \u201917, had an idea \u2014 not for the first time \u2014 of how to add value to people\u2019s lives and revenue to his bank account. An entrepreneur by nature, he had launched his first business, a nonprofit, while still an undergraduate student in NC State University\u2019s industrial engineering program. He started a more successful venture shortly before he enrolled in a master\u2019s degree program at Poole School of Management to learn global innovation management. And in his final semester, he and a friend had another brainstorm.\r\n\r\nPoon had learned from each of his prior ventures. This time, he decided to leverage the learning curve of other start-up founders. He pulled together a slide deck and his courage, polished his presentation and strode into a networking event hosted by the NC State Entrepreneurship Clinic.\r\n\r\n\u201cYou always hear how the most successful people had a mentor who invested in them,\u201d Poon said. \u201cI was hoping to find someone to invest in me, to be honest with me, and to challenge me into growing as an entrepreneur.\u201d\r\n Mentoring has shaped NC State alum Andrew Poon’s career and his life. He now returns to help mentor new student entrepreneurs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":5628,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"source":"","ncst_custom_author":"","ncst_show_custom_author":false,"ncst_dynamicHeaderBlockName":"","ncst_dynamicHeaderData":"","ncst_content_audit_freq":"","ncst_content_audit_date":"","ncst_content_audit_display":false,"ncst_backToTopFlag":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[211,19,137,3,286,9],"tags":[900,164,901,902,71],"_ncst_magazine_issue":[],"class_list":["post-5627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entrepreneurship","category-giving","category-industry","category-mie","category-newswire","category-students","tag-andrew-poon","tag-entrepreneurship","tag-eric-huang","tag-mentorship","tag-nc-state-entrepreneurship-clinic"],"displayCategory":null,"acf":{"ncst_posts_meta_modified_date":null},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/poole.ncsu.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/poole.ncsu.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/poole.ncsu.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poole.ncsu.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5627"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/poole.ncsu.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5627\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5657,"href":"https:\/\/poole.ncsu.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5627\/revisions\/5657"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poole.ncsu.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/poole.ncsu.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poole.ncsu.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poole.ncsu.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5627"},{"taxonomy":"_ncst_magazine_issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poole.ncsu.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/_ncst_magazine_issue?post=5627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Connecting Entrepreneurs, Mentors<\/h4>\r\nFinding a mentor is harder than it seems. People who have accomplished great success don\u2019t have a lot of free time. Lewis Sheats, the executive director of the NC State Entrepreneurship Clinic and a serial entrepreneur himself, made it easier for those in need of mentoring to find someone willing to help. He invited a few dozen Triangle entrepreneurs to a series of four gatherings held at a local restaurant during the spring 2017 semester. A few dozen students, aspiring business owners all, joined them. Using a speed-dating format, the potential mentors and mentees learned what each had to offer.\r\n\r\n\u201cIt\u2019s invaluable, if you are a serious entrepreneur, to have that experience,\u201d Poon said.\r\n\r\nAt the event, Poon met Eric Huang, founder and chief executive officer of Prometheus Group, a 150-employee asset management software company acquired last year by a private equity firm. Poon asked for a meeting, and Huang set one up for seven in the morning. At that early hour, Poon explained his idea for a long-distance ride-sharing platform. Huang asked questions about how Poon planned to build the business and program the service, then he stated flat-out that he didn\u2019t like the idea.\r\n\r\nBut he went on to explain why. That proved to be a valuable gift to Poon.\r\n\r\n\u201cI agreed with him on the spot,\u201d said Poon, who had had the same misgivings. \u201cI needed to hear it from someone else.\u201d\r\n\r\nWhat should have been the end turned out to be the beginning.\r\n\r\n\u201cHe didn\u2019t like our idea,\u201d Poon said, \u201cbut he liked that we were the kind of people who go out and do things. We weren\u2019t afraid to fail. That\u2019s the most important thing for entrepreneurship, and it\u2019s something you can\u2019t teach.\u201d\r\n
Moving Ideas Forward<\/h4>\r\nHuang had had an idea for a business simmering on a back burner in his brain for a few years. He hadn\u2019t found anyone he wanted to work with on it until he met Poon. He suggested that he and Poon partner to make it happen. He laid out his idea and what success would look like, and Poon agreed.\r\n\r\n\u201cI walked out of his office not with an offer for a job but with an offer for a company,\u201d Poon said.\r\n\r\nIn the new venture, Real E Notes, Poon and Brandon Staton are creating a checklist for real estate agents to add more value to their communication with clients. For instance, real estate agents might walk into a house and notice that a pet has left scratches in the floor. The agent would run the numbers to ascertain how much it would cost to refurbish or whether the floor could be refinished at all. By compiling such information on a number of areas of potential repairs and renovations, the agent could generate a report to give clients a better idea of the true cost of buying the house and fixing it up.\r\n\r\nSimultaneously, Poon and Staton are working on another project called Shipmint, a logistics platform specializing in obtaining the best small-package shipping rates for volume shippers.\r\n\r\nPoon and Staton have their offices in the same building in Raleigh as Prometheus, and Huang keeps an open-door policy for any questions the young entrepreneurs have. Once a week, in their standing Friday meetings, Huang checks in to make sure Poon\u2019s and Staton\u2019s fledgling companies are on the right trajectory.\r\n\r\n\u201cEvery day is a new adventure, a new challenge,\u201d Poon said. \u201cEvery day, I\u2019m learning something new.\u201d\r\n
Paying Forward<\/h4>\r\nNow that the company has started down a path toward success, Poon has returned to the Entrepreneurship Clinic networking meetings, this time as a potential mentor. One piece of advice he wants to impart is to urge aspiring entrepreneurs to make the most of the networking opportunities by coming with an idea.\r\n\r\n\u201cYou need a tangible objective to get entrepreneurs to work on it with you,\u201d he said. \u201cTalk to people and be willing to hear their feedback.\u201d\r\n\r\nHe wants to pass along what he has learned from Huang about how to recognize a good idea, and how to think about it from a business perspective.\r\n\r\nAnother bit of wisdom he learned firsthand: \u201cPut yourself in a position to be lucky.\u201d\r\n\r\nPoon considers himself lucky to have met Huang. But it was not random. Poon continually put himself out to connect with people and build his network. He came up with ideas and worked them through to present a feasible concept. He was willing to try, and to risk failure, and to try again.\r\n\r\n\u201cEric saw something in me that was worth taking a risk on,\u201d he said.\r\n\r\nComing to the networking events as a mentor is much less stressful than when he went as a potential mentee, Poon said. Now he gets to listen more, he doesn\u2019t have to spend time preparing and he can indulge in the joy of empowering people to capture their potential.\r\n\r\n\u201cI can draw from the energy of people who want to go out there and create something,\u201d he said.\r\n\r\nMentoring has shaped Poon\u2019s career; shaped his life, really, because he views his career as a trajectory, more than an end goal. Every day, he wakes up wanting to be better than the day before. He offers a few final points:\r\n
\r\n \t