This past weekend after an especially social Venture Fridays in Red Nova Labs’ basement, I decided to visit a few friends in Roeland Park, where I lived briefly after college. The purpose of the gathering was nothing special besides it was Friday and none of us had to be at work until Monday morning. When I arrived, I noticed the same familiar faces as well as some new ones, but everyone was enjoying a pleasant Kansas City evening and getting to know one another.
After only the first few topics of conversation were exhausted, something caught my attention as a theme amongst almost everyone involved in this discussion: Everyone was an entrepreneur. My old roommate had continued what he and I started as a freelance web design and development partnership as well as getting his feet wet in music production. One of the new faces was starting his own clothing line. My friend Peter was producing an EP for a local performer who goes by Joey Cool (found here) and the list goes on. But everyone was doing something, whether they had a full-time employer or not, for which they had passion.
When you start college, the sky is the limit and you can finally study what interests and drives you (or so we’re led to believe). Post-graduation is a different story, at least for me. You look for those dream jobs for a few months, until bills start collecting and you just need a steady income. I swallowed my dreams by taking an entry-level position at a well-established corporation that had become so muddied with bureaucracy and archaic business practices that a monkey, without a college degree, could have done it. After three years of daily soul-draining, I re-lit the fire under me and began searching for something I could not only do, but do with passion and do well.
Now I’m working for a web startup, which is something I knew I wanted to do since we received our first CD emblazoned with that all too familiar logo in the mid-90s. The trend doesn’t stop there either. More and more I am running into people that start to glow when they talk about their passions, which they’re trying to make into a career. With the multitude of tools at our fingertips via the intarwebz -- dealing with everything from crowd-sourcing to legal advice -- it’s now within nearly anyone’s fingertips to finally stop saying, “I’m going to do this someday,” and start doing it. Venture Fridays is full of them and so is Kansas City.
If you missed the Maker Faire at Union Station this weekend: A) you shouldn't have and B) go next year. The fire of entrepreneurship was blazing all weekend and it was amazing to see what some people had done with their concepts. Whether they are biologists or just avid gamers, they all have an idea, a skill, a talent, and most importantly, a passion. With any combination of those and an Internet connection, it’s now easier than ever to make those abstracts into a reality. This is exciting for me, and should be for you too.
