Developing an Entrepreneurial Venture That Succeeds With Kevin Willer

Anita Brick: Hi, this is Anita Brick, and welcome to CareerCast at Chicago Booth. To help you advance in your career. Today we're delighted to be speaking with Kevin Willer. Kevin started at Google in 2000, just two years after they launched, and helped the company advance. He worked at Google until 2011, when he became a partner in New World Ventures and president and CEO of the Chicagoland Entrepreneurial Center.

Kevin is a graduate of Chicago Booth from the Exec MBA Program. Kevin, thanks so much, and it's delightful to have you actually sitting here in Chicago in my office.

Kevin Willer: Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

Anita Brick: What made you want to enter the world of entrepreneurship via Google? At that time, it was really a baby company.

Kevin Willer: Right, absolutely. Well, I—my career started when I was an entrepreneur at a younger age, when I was doing jobs around town in Wilmette, where I grew up. And in college I ran a distribution and program for the New York Times and the Boston Globe. So I've been doing entrepreneurship for a long time. I worked for U.S. Robotics, which was a tech startup company in Chicago that made modems, bought by 3Com a few years ago, and then worked for CGMI, the big internet incubator, during the dot-com boom.

So I love the world of entrepreneurship and being part of a fast-growing young company that really could make a lot of change in the world. I'd like to say I knew that Google was going to become this world-changing big company, but really, I was looking for an exciting opportunity in the internet space in 2000. And because some of the companies were falling apart, there weren't a lot of them, and Google seemed to be a great option with great technology and a great team.

Anita Brick: So an evening student asked a question which sounds like a good place for us to start, and that's how do you know if an idea is worth pursuing?

Kevin Willer: The first thing is always trust your ideas. Always believe in your ideas. There's no doubt about it. If you have a great idea and you think it's worth something, don't stop and listen to anybody telling you it's not a great idea, but then you've got to vet it, right? And you've got to figure out, is there a market for your idea?

Is there an opportunity? How hard is it to create that product or service that you're looking to bring into the world? How easy would it be to sell it or to get partners for it? Ideas are the crux of everything we do in entrepreneurship. You need to start there, but you have to believe in it. You have to go and do some research, really understand how much potential that idea has.

I always like to say that, you know, we alone are not a focus group. You know, we might have some ideas on things. And, you know, I think that this would be something that we would want in our lives. But you've got to go out and really get some data to support that.

Anita Brick: All right. So a lot of entrepreneurial ideas are not well-funded at the outset. How do you go do that research without the funding?

Kevin Willer: That's the interesting thing. That's where a place like Booth has been such a great incubator for ideas, because students are in school getting their advanced degrees while they work on their idea on the side. You're also seeing a lot of folks in the corporate world work on ideas outside of their daily jobs, you know, in their after hours.

So they're funding it through their paychecks or they're funding it through however they're making their life work at that time. But what's exciting about today's entrepreneurs in the startup world today is this kind of capital-efficient nature of a lot of startups, especially the ones that are digitally enabled or tech enabled. They don't have to be tech companies, but companies that are solving problems in the financial services space, or the travel space or the marketing space that have technology underpinnings, which allow them to get off the ground with only a little bit of funding because of the kind of capital-efficient nature of the technology platforms.

Anita Brick: I want to come back to the research piece and then jump ahead into the funding. So at that stage, when someone is still working full time and they're bootstrapping in a sense, using their, leveraging their paycheck to do that, what are some things that you would recommend that someone does to research to know if that idea is viable?

Kevin Willer: That obviously depends on the marketplace that they're looking at. But usually the first step, I believe, is talking to people who have domain experience in that marketplace. Right? So if you're thinking about something in the advertising world or the marketing world, talk to people, professionals in that world, network through your network with those folks, have coffees with them, start to socialize your idea.

You don't have to have a big presentation or a bunch of data at the outset. It's really going around and talking to folks and getting their perspective on it, telling you why they think it would work or not work. Now they might be right, they might be wrong. But gathering that information, you'll start to be able to triangulate and say, okay, you know, this is valuable if I do it this way.

That's the first step. There's also a lot of programs in communities that you can check out. There's things like small-business development centers or things like SCORE, or there's university programs that can help budding entrepreneurs, you know, start to vet their ideas.

Anita Brick: Like the Polsky Center here.

Kevin Willer: Like the Polsky Center, absolutely. And like the CEC that I run, too.

Anita Brick: And people can access the stuff from the Chicagoland Entrepreneurial Center— a lot of people listening are not in Chicago, right? But they can go online.

Kevin Willer: Right, as they can access Polsky-related stuff. And that's where I think it’s exciting about the digital kind of nature of our world now, is that a lot of this information is available out there, and it's really a matter of going out and looking for it. Google, you know, it's a great search engine. It actually can plug you into a lot of interesting things there.

One of the resources I direct people to is something called the Startup America Partnership. It was launched by the White House in the spring. And it's really a platform to plug startups or, you know, entrepreneurs into resources they potentially need to build their companies. So do a search on Startup America Partnership, and they have a wealth of resources on that site.

Anita Brick: Excellent. So let's assume you have a good idea—this actually came from an Exec MBA student—and you believe it could be really big. You want to develop it, but you're a little concerned about leaving your current job. Can it be done organically? Do you have to be able to go in and make a big splash?

Kevin Willer: Yeah.

Anita Brick: What do you see?

Kevin Willer: I mean, that's the age-old question. That depends on your kind of risk profile, right? I mean, if you're in your 20s and you don't have a mortgage or kids, I would say go all in. If you socialized that idea and gathered some data and you have an opportunity, that's a great time to do it.

Now, from an Executive MBA student, I know the average age of my class was 37. Most of those people had families and mortgages, and all of that makes it a little harder to walk away from a nice paycheck and go all in. So in those situations, you also have the added advantage of being a seasoned professional.

So investors and supporters, angel investors specifically, being in and going to environments like the Polsky Center, like entrepreneurial centers where you can start to socialize your idea, but also network with people in that industry and start telling them about your ideas because they might be willing to support it, join it in some way, or maybe invest in it.

I've seen ideas get funded or supported with, you know, just an idea on a sheet of paper, really. So it's really an interesting time to be able to start a company right now and be an entrepreneur.

Anita Brick: We know you mentioned sharing the idea, which of course is a great thought. I've had conversations with people even in this role here. But when I was living in California, where before they would say a word to me, they wanted me to sign a nondisclosure agreement.

Kevin Willer: I mean, I see a lot of pitches, a lot of pitches. Every, every day I'm pitched about something. NDA, I have never signed. I mean, let's go to that for, when I was at Google, people wanted me to because they didn't want Google to, you know, steal the idea. But the reality is NDAs right now, I just don't see them in practice, whether that's a good idea or not. It's just creating a barrier to really socializing your idea and their ideas. If you believe in something, they are going to go after it. Unless it's some kind of totally unique idea or technology that nobody has ever created, by and large, there's going to be other people doing it.

What scares me most is when entrepreneurs say nobody's doing this in the entire world, because right now there's so much entrepreneurship going on, so many companies being started. There's always someone similar to what you're doing. Maybe you have a unique way to do it. Don't spend a lot of time worrying about protecting it. Spend a lot of time worrying about going after it and making it a reality.

Anita Brick: Got it. That makes sense. Then back to the funding question. There are two questions, one from a student and one from an alum. And the first one was what are avenues to raising money outside of friends and family for a business that is considered a lifestyle business?

Kevin Willer: Yeah.

Anita Brick: … versus one that VCs would be interested in that was scalable. So how do you get money for a lifestyle business?

Kevin Willer: Well, and they put a caveat in there outside of friends and family. So that's a very challenging question. I'm going to say that's not going to be easy, and that's why the person is probably asking the question. Venture capitalists by their very nature are high-risk investing but looking for big returns. So returns venture gamblers are unlikely to invest in the lifestyle business.

You could position a lifestyle business as maybe a growth business, not say the word lifestyle, and maybe you could get venture capitalists interested. But really, you're going to have to go to people in your network, whether they're friends and family or just people related to your professional world or your social world or whatever. Those are the people that are going to be more likely to fund those things.

There's also banks. I mean, banks are not the greatest place right now to get credit, but if it's a lifestyle business and you have good credit and you have a good background, they may be willing to put some money into it and take that approach instead. But by and large, I talk to people about lifestyle businesses, they're usually successful in friends and family related raising money, investment dollars.

Anita Brick: Are there any other funds outside of traditional VC money and friends and family? Are you seeing any other funds that are trying to stimulate entrepreneurship?

Kevin Willer: There's government funds that are popping up …

Anita Brick: All over the world.

Kevin Willer: Yeah, absolutely. Which is, you know, an interesting kind of way to look at it. So the State of Illinois recently announced that they have $20 million over three years that kind of came down from the federal government to invest in early-stage companies. But the stipulations of it were that it can't be on its own. It has to be no more than 10 percent of a round, in addition to VC money or other institutional money. So that's another source, potentially. The angel world, which can sometimes be friends and family. But also there's professional angels now.

Anita Brick: Oh, like the Hyde Park Angels.

Kevin Willer: Yeah, exactly. Hyde Park Angels is the best angel group—I mean, I'm biased, I'm part of it—in Chicago. But it's really driven a movement of angel investing in Chicago. So you have a lot of high-net-worth individuals and kind of, I guess, family offices that are willing to make investments in this area and aren't the traditional kind of venture capitalists.

One other thing that's interesting is you're seeing venture capitalists actually make some early, early investments that traditionally would be called angel investment. And they're doing that because they're really interested in backing early entrepreneurs who might have a good idea. Maybe the business isn't quite fleshed out, but they want to make a bet and have an option on that entrepreneur.

Anita Brick: That's great. I was listening to something on NPR that I thought was fascinating. And this woman, she just graduated from undergrad, she's an engineer, and her idea was you could power up your devices through the equivalent of something like WiFi, right? I was just really fascinated. And so as a result, she started when she was in school to get that kind of funding and backing and resources and support. And then because she reached a certain kind of critical mass, she was able to go to other places.

Kevin Willer: Yeah, that's the kind of thing that's really interesting—where you can incubate something in that educational environment and kind of get connected to people in that and sometimes get a partner. And this is something we haven't talked about, but really, you know, going it alone can be challenging. And there's a lot of great entrepreneurs who have done that.

But really, a lot of successful entrepreneurs find partners—and partners that are not the exact same as them. So, you know, they might be a technical person, and they find a business person as a partner or vice versa. So, you know, really finding someone who complements your skills, where you guys can socialize things with each other, bounce ideas off each other, and really go to the marketplace together, usually provides more momentum for a team.

You know, we usually like to look at, you know, small teams of folks to invest in because they're able to create a lot of energy working together.

Anita Brick: Makes sense. Whenever I think about this whole subject area, I guess my guilty television is watching Shark Tank. It seems like there are two groups that come on there, and the third tends to get the funding. But there's the group that comes in with all the numbers, and then there's the group that comes in with a great deal of enthusiasm.

But it seems like a lot of times that they come in with a really inflated valuation. And so what are some things that someone can do when they're looking at the numbers? Someone asked a question about the numbers to make sure that the valuation is not cheating them, but it's not so inflated that they won't be taken seriously.

Kevin Willer: And it's an interesting time right now. I mean, a lot of people use the word “frothy” in the marketplace. There's some interesting valuations out there. I mean, there's the public markets that are crazy for things like LinkedIn [...] and those kinds of things. But then the kind of venture world; I mean, there have been some big investments at some lofty valuations.

So right now for an entrepreneur, it's a very good time to raise money. If you've got a good idea, a good team, good traction, you can probably get a higher valuation today than you would in the past. What I would counsel, and this is from kind of the venture side, but also working with a lot of entrepreneurs, is being realistic about it. And making sure that you're talking to a lot of different folks and really seeing where the market kind of sets itself, and not just talking to one VC or really putting all your eggs in one basket—really going around and talking to a lot of different folks and getting perspectives from all of them is very important.

You also want venture money that's not just going to be writing a check, but are going to be very involved and help you build your business, who will bring maybe some domain expertise and connections into the world that you're trying to build your business in. That's far more important, getting smart venture money that's really relevant to your domain, then getting some big valuation from someone who's not going to be able to help you out.

Anita Brick: So it sounds like you're saying getting those resources, getting that knowledge base, getting that brain trust, of course, is super important. But when you go in with the valuation, certainly do the kind of due diligence that you would do if you were investing. If everybody's telling you it's too high, we can't invest, then you may need to go back and redo the network.

Kevin Willer: Absolutely, absolutely. And to the extent you can, I mean, not to think regionally here, but talk to folks in different parts of the country because they're going to bring different perspectives. And that is very important to think about, because they are going to approach things in different ways and valuations, different things. I think you also have a scenario where you might want to raise a smaller round first to get the idea off the ground, get some traction in terms of customers or usage or even revenues, because then when you go to raise that bigger round, maybe that the first round is in seed or an angel round and then the next round is a series, you really have a lot more to talk about. You're not talking about just an idea. You're talking about, hey, I took a little bit of money and I created this, and now I'm raising more money today to the next level. Staging that out sometimes helps in getting better valuations from that series around.

Anita Brick: That makes sense. So let's shift gears a little bit because there are some questions about not necessarily starting up but being part of a startup. So one of the questions came from an evening student saying, knowing what you know now after being at Google for more than a decade, if you could go back in time, what advice would you give yourself before starting with a young entrepreneurial firm?

Kevin Willer: It's a tough one. People always ask, how did you know Google was going to become this, you know, incredible company? And candidly, I don't know if I did, but what the data I had in front of me was, if you look at the founders, look at the, you know, founder or founders and really, you know, listen to their vision for the company in the firm, and if you really buy into that, that's the first thing—you have to be able to join leaders that you believe.

Second, in my case it was definitely who the investors were, and it was Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia Capital and obviously some of the best names in the business. So you knew that you were having some great people behind you and that would help, you know, over time, build up the company.

My experience within technology companies and using the technology, it really was, I thought, you know, world class, you know, at the time, and we were really going to be able to build something on it. So those were the three data boards I had with Google. And then, you know, over time, staying with it. First few years were not easy. And there were many times where we thought about maybe moving on to something else.

So it was really looking at how the company was being built, the leaders we were bringing in to help us build it, and the traction we were getting with our customers over time, and that you kept seeing that it was growing and growing and growing, and you knew that this was going to become something great. That's really my approach on it. But it can be a little hard to join an early-stage company. So you really got to vet it out as much as you can.

Anita Brick: Founders can have a very powerful, almost monolithic voice in an organization. How did you, coming in as a nonfounder, get a voice?

Kevin Willer: What was neat about our role, myself and a colleague, when we started the Chicago office for Google in December of 2000, we were the first kind of small regional office. There was a presence in Northern California, a large presence there. And then some folks in New York City, which was kind of like the headquarters of the business side, the advertising side of the business.

So we were the first kind of regional office. So we had our own brand and had our own voice. We could say, hey, this is what the Midwest is saying about our products, and this is the feedback we're getting. So that was kind of a neat position. So try and figure out what makes you unique in the organization, what your role is and why your voice needs to be heard, I think is really important.

But you also in an organization like Google where you have heavy technology and then you have the business side, the technology people, the engineers run Google. There's no doubt about it. The business people do not. You know, they help make that great technology, they help monetize it, and they help build it and all of that. But at the end of the day, the engineers run the place.

In my mind, as a business person, you have to really be able to speak the language of the engineering side of the house, the technology side of the house, and it's a different kind of language and really be able to present your ideas and your opinions or perspective in language that they understand.

Anita Brick: I think that's true. Anytime anyone's making any shift—functional, industry, etc.—in addition, you need to be able to speak the language. Otherwise you're just not taken seriously.

Kevin Willer: Absolutely. That's right.

Anita Brick: That was from an alum. And by the way, it's very tricky because you never know if something is going to work, or in some cases the founders don't last; they’ve brought in a new team and all that.

Kevin Willer: Well, and that's something we dealt with at Google for sure. I mean, there's no doubt that over time, the business scaled so dramatically, so quickly, that while I love to say I've run $100 million businesses before, I mean, this happened very quickly when we had to really kind of uplevel our game, and a lot of new people were brought in to take important roles.

And there's no doubt about that. I mean, from Larry and Sergey to the founders bringing in Eric Schmidt, a guy who had been a CEO at Novell and other places to bring in that experience. And what's interesting to me is if you look around the digital world right now, the leaders of a lot of the biggest companies are ex-Google people who did a great job at Google but then, you know, wanted to find a new opportunity. They had to look outside Google. So people like Sheryl Sandberg, the CEO of Facebook; Dick Costolo, the CEO of Twitter; Tim Armstrong, the CEO of AOL. I mean, those are all, you know, Google leaders that look for their next opportunity outside of Google.

Google is an incredible place to be for a long time. There's sometimes big opportunities outside of that, too.

Anita Brick: Fair enough. A weekend MBA student said, I am the first employee of a startup venture. What should I focus on in the first 90 days to make the best of it?

Kevin Willer: You know, being the first employee? It's adding as much value as possible. You were brought in for a reason, you know, the founder knows where they want to go with that. They brought you in for a specific reason and role. And the most important thing you can do for that founder is take that responsibility off their plate so they can focus on other things related to the business and really be able to execute and move things forward in the short term. You want to show that you're as committed as they are and that you're going to deliver a lot of value.

Anita Brick: It seems like you also have to have a meeting of the minds. I mean, you can't assume anything, especially with a founder, right?

Kevin Willer: Absolutely. No. Yeah. I mean, the founder has probably sold you, first employee, on their vision. So, you know, you're on board with that. But now it comes down to the tactical side of things. Here's the vision. Here's maybe the strategy. But what do we actually have to do each day to get to that long-term vision? You know, what kinds of things can we do in the short term to really start building this company?

Anita Brick: And communicate a lot.

Kevin Willer: With a candidate? Yes. Well, and that's what— we talk a lot about place. And in this digital world, people think, oh, I can be one place. My employees can be there and there and there. It's hard. Communication is very important. So sitting next to each other, I found from talking with a lot of entrepreneurs, is so energizing and really helps move things forward that much quicker. So being in, you know, geographic proximity to each other is actually very important.

Anita Brick: So communicate on a regular basis. Make sure that you're producing results that you care about. But you want to be sure that they care about it.

Kevin Willer: Absolutely, absolutely.

Anita Brick: Sounds good. Another question. This came from an Exec MBA student. Suppose you were offered a CEO succession opportunity in a small but proven and profitable business, but you were relatively new to the industry. You know, the main market trends and customer pain points. And by running the numbers, you feel it's a great opportunity. But at the same time, you feel you might need more experience to fully understand the company and the market to take over the steering wheel. What would you be cautious about? Would you consider the opportunity at all?

Kevin Willer: No doubt about it. I mean, I would absolutely consider the opportunity if it fits within your career aspirations. To be the CEO of a growth company that already has somewhat, it sounds like, of a proven track record in an industry that has some good trends, hopefully growth trends, I could— but there's no doubt you should consider that opportunity.

And you know, today's workforce, I see it differently. I think it's changed from people saying here's the career ladder and here's each successive step I need to do. Really, it's about trying new things, and trying new opportunities that might be a little uncomfortable in your career path, if they work out, can be really impactful. And even if they don't, you'll learn a lot from that situation.

Anita Brick: OK, so what questions? What are three questions that he should ask before jumping in?

Kevin Willer: I think I would spend a lot of time with the current executives obviously, and figure out why maybe the founder isn't the right person to fill this role anymore. What is driving this decision? I think that's the most important thing. And understand the politics of the situation. I think, to the extent that there's a board of directors or an advisory board or something like that, spend time with people who are related to the firm, but maybe not involved in the day-to-day activities, to just get their perspective.

And they might bring in some information that's interesting. And candidly, I would spend time with the, you know, the rank and file of the organization and just spend some time with them if that's possible. And, you know, maybe some of the leaders—they can identify who—and ask them some tough questions about, you know, why are they part of the organization, and why are they excited about coming into work every day?

And where do they think it's going? So getting data points from all those folks will really help you create a picture of if this organization is one that you want to join.

Anita Brick: What about their investors? Is it too touchy to want to talk to their investors or their bankers, or whomever is providing the funds?

Kevin Willer: I think it's a great idea. I mean, you know, you can definitely ask that. I wonder, you know, sometimes folks will or won't, sometimes the board members will be investors as well. So you might be able to cover that with some of them. But absolutely, I mean, investors should be on board knowing that there's going to be an additional management person brought in. And in fact, the investors, maybe the lead venture firm, if there is one, probably is helping with the search. So you're probably going to spend some time with them anyway.

And that's just what I see. You know, in the venture world here, as many people as you can talk to. Customers would be great to talk to, to the extent you can do that, if there's someone, some key customer for that business, that would be willing to sit down with you and say, hey, we love this about the company, but we'd like to see this in the future. That might help as well.

Anita Brick: I guess that's especially important if they have a few customers that represent a big percentage of their revenue.

Kevin Willer: Yeah, harder with, you know, if it's just a consumer play where there's, you know, millions. But yeah, absolutely. I think that's the key.

Anita Brick: Great. Do you have time for maybe a couple more questions? Okay. A weekend student asked, how do you hire really good talent when you don't have a lot of money to pay them?

Kevin Willer: Right. That's a tough one. You know, we saw this at Google. The first rule of any entrepreneur world and startup world effort is hire the best people you can possibly find. But the next rule is you have no money to hire them with. So it's a very challenging situation because if you hire the wrong people early on, you could end up just sinking the whole enterprise because, you know, it was just the wrong person to get you behind and all of that.

But the capital side becomes challenging because you don't have as much money, but a lot of these kind of capital efficient technology or digitally based startups, they spend a lot of money, most of their money, on labor. Right? There's really nothing else. I mean, there might be a place to live, but that's it. It's really on programmers and developers and business people around that.

So people is everything. Literally, how do you do it? It's really about the framing. How do you bring it down to the people? You go and find people who have the right risk profile, who are willing to take a chance on an early-stage company because they see the potential big return on the other side. So structuring a deal with them is likely going to include less salary, more equity, some kind of interesting kind of carrot out there that's really gonna allow them to, you know, do well if the company is successful.

It's interesting. Again, on the geographic front, this is well known in Silicon Valley, and a lot of people are willing to take more equity and less salary. Sometimes in more conservative places in the country, like Chicago, you'll see people take the guaranteed salary and a little less on the equity. So part of this is going to be education, sometimes, depending on where you are.

Anita Brick: Do you find that that is different in other parts of the world?

Kevin Willer: It's fascinating to see that it changes from region to region and different countries and all of that, just people's approach to the risk involved in the return they're hoping for. But let's be honest—most people want to join a startup because they want to build something. I want to be part of something that grows, but they also see, hey, this could be exciting.

This could be, you know, this could change my life from a return standpoint, whereas a traditional career is probably just going to keep getting you incrementally more nice paychecks and all that. There is a carrot opportunity here that people look at. You know, I think founders are going to have to try and find the people that fit that kind of profile and then create compensation plans that, you know, match what they're looking for.

Anita Brick: Got it. Yeah. There's one question I found kind of intriguing. It is a trend question. This is from another Executive MBA student, who said hello Kevin, and thanks for spending some time with us on this chat. Here's my question. If we step back on major recent entrepreneurial success stories, we can see the major ones do happen in the tech/web/dot-com industry.

Of course, most of the services provided have a huge impact on overall productivity—the famous third Industrial Revolution. Do you have a feeling that this general pattern indicates that brick-and-mortar industries which produce final finished goods are not anymore subject to high growth?

Kevin Willer: It's a great question. I don't think that brick and mortar doesn't have an opportunity for high growth. It's just you gotta think about the economics of the digital world. And these, again, are tech companies, right? These are companies that are solving old-school business problems that are tech enabled or web enabled. They're using the social web to scale very quickly, and they're capital efficient because you don't need a lot of brick-and-mortar type things. You don't need to buy a lot of inventory. You don't need to manufacture something specifically. You're not doing R&D for 10 years to create a new drug.

I mean, this is a different type of startup and a different type of entrepreneur that you're seeing today in the digital world. You're going to see, and you're already seeing, a lot of interest in creating companies here. There's little barriers to entry, which is great for entrepreneurship and startups and all of that. But, you know, you're also seeing some really good ideas and some maybe not-so-good ideas. There needs to be some ferreting out of what the best, you know, ideas and best startups are.

In the brick-and-mortar world, we're still seeing a lot of great entrepreneurship, specifically retail and new concepts in kind of the retail world. I think about a company like Protein Bar in Chicago, which is really expanding rapidly into healthy kind of fast food, quick food or whatever they’re calling it. You know, those are great opportunities and they actually can scale pretty quickly, you know, small-format stores. But you're definitely seeing the trend and the energy right now in the digital world. And I don't think this is a fad because the underlying economics have changed.

Anita Brick: Got it. So someone contemplating entrepreneurship, what are three things that that person can do beginning today?

Kevin Willer: That's a good question. So when you're thinking about entrepreneurship, first you gotta look at, you know, what's driving you there. Is it because you have a great idea or because you just want a new career and all of that? You got to figure out, do you want to be the entrepreneur? Do you want to start your own specific entity, firm, product, service, whatever?

Or do you want to join an early-stage company to kind of get a taste of what, you know, an entrepreneurial world and lifestyle is about and then maybe, you know, eventually spin off and do your own kind of thing? You need to look at your risk profile and just make sure that the funding mechanism for your life and your family or your home or whatever is going to be able to be met for a, you know, a good period of time.

I mean, a lot of people talk about a year is, at least, you know, a good runway to give you that to ferret something out, see if it's a good idea and can get some traction, maybe raise some investment dollars in that kind of thing. But you want to have a nest egg in place if at all possible.

And then I think that the third piece is you have to go after, you have to do it. You can't — I've met a lot of entrepreneurs who talk about doing things, but they don't actually get it done. They don't actually just take the dive and go and do it. Go out there and get it done. Go ask anybody in your network for help. Go find resources in your community that may be able to help you. Just go all in, because that's really what creates the best entrepreneurs.

Anita Brick: This is great, Kevin. Thank you. Lots of wisdom, lots of inspiration to move people forward. But you're right. Action without action is just a great idea.

Kevin Willer: Absolutely, absolutely. And the last thing I'll say is, you know, we're all Booth and Polsky related here. But the Polsky Center was ranked the number two entrepreneurship program, or Booth was, in the country in an entrepreneurship magazine. I mean, we have some of the best entrepreneurs coming out of Booth, so I hope that continues and we continue to be leaders in this space.

Anita Brick: Great. Thanks so much, and thank you all for listening. This is Anita Brick with CareerCast at Chicago Booth. Keep advancing.