Submit a 5-Spot!
100 URBAN ENTREPRENEURS isn’t just a foundation dedicated to promoting urban entrepreneurship nationwide — it’s a familial community of like-minded go-getters who have plenty to teach (and learn from) one another.
One way we help encourage such interactions is through the 5-Spot, a brief summation of five things that inspire you as you start and build your business. The five business books that taught you the most. The five movies that capture the entrepreneurial experience better than any other. The five mentors whose advice you cherish most. The five business founders whose life and work inspire you to dream bigger and push even harder to make your dreams a reality.
Want to join the 100UE 5-Spot community? Send your 5-Spots (video or text) to Brian@100UE.org, and we’ll post them here and tweet them to everyone in the 100UE community. A sample 5-Spot, submitted by 100UE fundee Steven Otu, is below. We’d love to hear from you — help us extend the reach of the 100UE family and the breadth of urban-entrepreneur knowledge.
———
Steven Otu’s Lifelong Entrepreneurial Inspirations
1. The Management Leadership for Tomorrow Program. This program has been a life-altering experience for me. It aims to be “the premier career-development institution that equips high-potential minorities with the key ingredients — skills, coaching and door-opening relationships — that unlock their potential.” The caliber of the students I met in the program, the training and mentoring I received, and the things I see alumni now doing motivate me to this day.
2. Steve Jobs. The late Apple impresario reinvented the computer industry with the Macintosh, was ousted from the company he cofounded, then forever changed the film industry with Pixar. He came back, 12 years later, to the company that turned its back on him and reinvented the music industry, the mobile-communications industry, and the computer industry all over again. I can’t help but admire someone whose sole purpose seemed to be to disrupt every industry he touched.
3. Mixergy.com. Just an amazing resource of some of the most highly sought-after technology entrepreneurs. Andrew Warner conducts some amazing interviews, getting these guys to talk about the early days, little-known secrets of how they marketed their products and more. I try to watch a few videos a week to make sure I’m staying on the right track.
4. The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century, by Thomas L. Friedman. In this work, Friedman offers some much-needed insight into just how connected today’s world really is. While his message focuses more of igniting Americans’ sense of urgency about the competition they face from other countries, for some reason I really like the idea of living in a world with few boundaries, where people are able to connect, share ideas, learn from one another and compete with one another. That just seems cooler to me.
5. Childhood hustle. I was the kid knocking on your door to cut your grass, trying to sell you a purse I got from eBay or some bootleg CDs, passing out fliers for the local barbershops and trying to throw parties at clubs for money. I like to consider some of those early ventures as entrepreneurship in its most authentic, unrefined form, and I’m happy to have retained that spirit — the entrepreneurial joy of creating and recognizing opportunities — throughout my life. •
