The sky’s the limit: Why pilots make great start-up employees, and why so many are entrepreneurs

By Ron Wiener, CEO, Earth Class Mail

Start-Up JunkiesI’ve been flying airplanes since 1984, and it is the greatest passion in my life outside of my own family and my addiction to start-up companies. For some pilots it’s about boring holes in the sky. For others it’s about just getting from Point A to Point B more efficiently. For me, it has always been about associating with ordinary people who have chosen to do an extraordinary thing – getting their pilot’s license, and beginning their never-ending quest of improving their skills and racking up their extraordinary experiences.

In this brotherhood of aviation I’ve met Fortune 500 CEOs and musicians, generals and housewives, astronauts and college students – all of whom share a common passion and were able to focus and achieve something special that 99.5% of the rest of the population hasn’t or isn’t even interested in attempting.

One can find many parallels between the kinds of people who fly airplanes and the kinds of people who succeed in entrepreneurship. But my first observation about these two populations is that aviation, like entrepreneurship, takes people from different walks of life, different educational and work experiences, even different cultures, and puts them all on a level playing field. It has always been amazing to me to watch a high-powered CEO taking lessons from a 20-year-old certified flight instructor (CFI) and bowing to her superior knowledge and experience, cowering at her admonitions and begging for her praise for any maneuver well done. What you do or have done in your business, medical, legal or other career, or in school, will have little bearing on what you’re about to do when you first start learning to fly airplanes. Anyone with more hours, more pilot ratings, more experience flying than you have under your belt is your de facto mentor in the air, and valued comrade on the ground. Read more

January 24, 2008 | Filed Under Start-Up Junkies | 2 Comments 

Top 10 tips for funding a start-up company

By Ron Wiener, CEO, Earth Class Mail Corporation

Start-up JunkiesRon Wiener, who has launched five start-up companies, is a member of Keiretsu Forum – the world’s largest formally organized group of angel investors – and has been active in non-profit entrepreneurial support organizations and a frequent speaker and writer on subjects relating to entrepreneurship and venture capital since 1991. The first episode of “Start-Up Junkies” follows Ron as he makes key presentations to angel and venture-capital investors, so we thought it would be especially appropriate for his blog this week to provide advice on raising investment funding.

Raising money for a startup can take an inordinate amount of the founders’ time and limited capital, so leveraging angel networks is a great way to go to make the process go quicker so you can get back to running your company. I’ve raised angel and venture capital for 10 ventures now, including five that I founded and ran as the first CEO (i.e., the one who needed to bring in the most difficult and expensive money the company will ever raise). After pitching deals to literally thousands of angel and institutional investors over the years, I’ve found that you can often do best by combining the momentum from angel groups with the momentum from unaffiliated angel investors to get the job done quickest. Here are a few tips that might help you as you undertake this task. Read more

January 23, 2008 | Filed Under Start-Up Junkies | 4 Comments 

Welcome to our ‘Start-Up Junkies’ blog!

Start-Up JunkiesThe MOJO HD high-def documentary series “Start-Up Junkies” debuted on Thursday, Jan. 24. And since we’re the company that’s exclusively featured in the series’ first season, we’re in a unique position to provide you with content to help you enjoy the series even more.

As the series progresses, we’ll be posting blog entries on this page that include behind-the-scenes anecdotes, advice for fellow start-up junkies, background info on the topics and events covered in the show, a chance to interact with Earth Class Mail executives and employees, and much more. Our blog writers will include CEO Ron Wiener and other members of the management team and employees who played major roles in the opening season.

(NOTE: If you don’t have an HDTV set or your cable operator doesn’t carry MOJO HD, you can watch the episodes online in streaming video at the “Start-Up Junkies” website.)

Visit this site early and often as “Start-Up Junkies” unfolds over the next eight weeks. We welcome your comments about the show, our company and its service.

January 22, 2008 | Filed Under Start-Up Junkies | 10 Comments 

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