Editor’s note: On Thursday night, Lulu eGames awarded $40,000 to NCSU student startups. Meanwhile, AuthenTec founder Scott Moody also offered advice to those wanting to be entrepreneurs. Sara Bill reports for Exit Event, a news partner with WRALTechWire.
RALEIGH, N.C. – More than 100 North Carolina State University student entrepreneurs sit in a conference hall at the Lulu eGames awards ceremony, waiting to hear the winners announced. Their business ventures are diverse, ranging from inspirational t-shirts to innovative medical devices. But the participants all have one thing in common: they hope to be one of the lucky few to win a portion of $40,000 in prize money.
And luck, it turns out, has a good deal to do with start-ups procuring funding and becoming successful. So says the keynote speaker F. Scott Moody, who co-founded the AuthenTec fingerprint sensor technology acquired by Apple in 2012 and whose newest venture K4Connect will soon unveil a system that allows homeowners to manage all of their smart devices in one place.
To the two dozen or so students who’ve just spent two months preparing for the annual competition, Moody shares the three major lessons he’s learned in his years building companies.
Lesson #1: You can’t be afraid.
Moody explains that the majority of businesses fail, and there is a lot of chance involved for those that survive. He even calls his job running a $200 million semi-conductor sector for Harris a “fluke.” But successful entrepreneurs are more than lucky, he points out. Because the odds are stacked against them, they have to be persistent.
The entire post can be read online.
