In today's thread:
Would you believe his best “lessons” learned came when he was an apprentice?
Being a consultant for a corporation has allowed Michael to build an empires - lets see why….
If you don't know Michael Girdley but you're into building ventures, then you've been living under a rock.
Michael started out working in engineering and marketing roles for other companies.
He learned from his boss what would work and what wouldn't, from choosing a business idea to running a team.
Michael now has a playbook that works for all his businesses and deep in that playbook he speaks of all of the mean things his old managers told him - he vowed never to do the same.
But the reality was that even though he loved software - he also hated the dog-eat-dog culture of Silicon Valley.
What he really wanted to do was be in the people business.
After couch-surfing in San Francisco and struggling to make it as an engineer in jobs that killed his spirit, Michael realized that he was more of a people person than he thought.
In a one-on-one interview, Michael told Alex Bridgeman:
"I liked people and marketing much more than sitting in front of a computer all day. And then did that for about five years, until the dot com crash happened."
But what he learned in his time in Silicon Valley was priceless…
He learned what not to do.
And he failed a bunch.
He built a restaurant venture that failed.
He built a fireworks venture that struggled.
Then - after 10 years of consistency he finally started to see success.
Right now, Michael Girdley is the Chairman and co-founder of Dura Software, the second-largest software company in San Antonio.
When he's not running Dura Software, he is acting as a partner at the Geekdom Fund, a seed-stage tech venture capital fund that has invested in over 50 high-growth tech companies.
In total, these ventures have enabled over 1,000 new tech jobs in the San Antonio area over the past decade and that's just an estimate.
Now that we know how a super venture founder like Michael made his way to the top of the ladder, is it something that is replicable for others?
Yes, yes it is.
It's as simple as knowing that you need to work for others first, be willing to try and fail a lot and then applying what you know to improve people's lives.
This is an approach we admire and follow at NineTwoThree, and it has served us well as we hit our second year on the Inc. 5000 list despite one of our most challenging years ever.
TL: DR You need to work for others first, be willing to try and fail a lot and then apply what you know to improve people's lives.
Then you have a successful business strategy.
