A commonality between many entrepreneurs is that they were pushed.

Whether by boredom, a sense of naivety, or grave need, something sparked them to jump off the proverbial cliff and into business for themselves.

For Lewis Sheats, a serial entrepreneur, lecturer at NC State University and founding member of the new NC State Entrepreneurship Clinic at HQ Raleigh, it was a need. And hundreds of NC State entrepreneurship students along with dozens of Triangle-area startups have benefited as a result. 

Lewis Sheats: His resume

Director, NC State Entrepreneurship Clinic; Senior Lecturer, Entrepreneurship

Education: MBA, Campbell University, 2005

Department / Affiliations

Management, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship

Lewis Sheats’s Personal Biography

Lewis Sheats has an extensive background in new venture planning, concept consulting, logistics, opportunity identification and analysis, manufacturing organization, marketing, and strategic planning. He is a serial entrepreneur focused on opportunity identification, execution and education.

Sheats’ leadership has expertly guided the opportunity creation and development of several unique new ventures from launch to profitability. He has raised venture funding ($6M+) and bootstrapped several ventures from concept to exit. Interstate Logistics, A Sweet Reminder and Securus are his most recent success stories in which he was a founder and on the management team through opportunity creation, concept development and execution.

Sheats has leveraged his experience to develop and lead an undergraduate entrepreneurship curriculum in Poole College based on experiential learning and individual student development. He is devoted to preparing the next generation of entrepreneurs as a senior lecturer of entrepreneurship in the NC State Poole College of Management.

As an educator and consultant, Sheats has been involved in the launch of many other ventures that range from non-tech to high technology based, venture backed to bootstrapped, and high growth to lifestyle start-ups.

Sheats has a BS in Finance from North Carolina State University in Raleigh, NC and an MBA from the Lundy-Fetterman School of Business at Campbell University. Sheats is an award-winning educator who was recently inducted into the international honor society, Beta Gamma Sigma.

Research Specialties

Entrepreneurship, new venture development, venture growth and logistics

Source: NCSU

As the clinic prepares to kick off its second semester of putting students to work on local startup projects (Startups can apply here) along with publishing research on entrepreneurship in this region, we sat down with Sheats to hear his startup story and get behind what’s driving him to make NC State a national leader in entrepreneurship education.

Early Entrepreneurial Sheats

It all started at the young age of 22, when Sheats was a full-time student at NC State and warehouse clerk at Rex Hospital with three mouths to feed.
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In the late 90s, Rex began working on a “just in time system,” which had previously only been implemented at Stanford University Hospital. This system was designed to increase the efficiency and decrease waste in the hospital by eliminating the need to carry inventory of various medical supplies.

Rex began ordering supplies only as needed, thereby reducing inventory cost.. Sheats noticed an opportunity for the more frequent shipping and delivery required, so he started a courier business called Interstate Logistics.

“I already had a van (…) so I figured it could work,” he says. 

But Sheats had a problem. As is common among young entrepreneurs, he never made a plan and quickly figured out how difficult it was to run a business. Soon after launching his venture, he adopted the slogan “anything, anytime, anywhere,” and began fielding all kinds of requests for delivery services. 

“So that meant moving organs one day and cheese sticks the next,” he jokes.

What happenes next? For the rest of the story, read:

http://exitevent.com/article/professor-nc-state-entrepreneurship-clinic-founder-lewis-sheats-150819

Note: ExitEvent is a news partner of WRAL TechWire.