🚀 ✉️ Incredibly positive impression
Yesenia Sevilla is your five minute mentor for past failures, lessons learned, and how to keep everyone involved in your future success.
🏡 What’s happening on StartupNash
This past week, the group discussed some of the SVB fallout, and more members reached out with job losses and news of cuts. Although it’s not the news any of us want to hear, the community can help with virtual networking.
📣 Big announcement
StartupNash is testing a concierge service for businesses or individuals who need help with a new business initiative or project. The service helps you plan and prioritize, offers ongoing project management, finds and manages professional services for you, and helps you setup your GTM strategy. It’s a great option for a project that isn’t large enough for a full-time team, but needs ongoing attention from you or your partners.
Intro from Kelley Griggs
Yesterday I had writer’s block and went ahead and published this week’s LaunchLetter without a proper introduction. Today, I’m back. Yesenia Sevilla is this week’s Five Minute Mentor, covering an important community resource, The Wond’ry. If you’ve been a letter getter for a while, you might remember Deanna Meador’s interview, also covering the Wond’ry a few years ago. Deanna has some updates herself. On March 8th, she raised 1.5M for Couture Technologies in just eight hours. Kathryn Rickmeyer broke the story in Tennbeat, another substack you should follow.
Yesenia’s point of view on what The Wond’ry does and the values of their community align closely with StartupNash. I think Vanderbilt’s programming for Entrepreneurship, whether its Owen School of Management or The Wond’ry, provides students with unique opportunities. Those resources play a key role in fueling our tech and startup community.
Here’s Yesenia, describing The Wond’ry in today’s Startup Spotlight.
The challenge
What is the problem The Wond’ry solves?
The Wond'ry is Vanderbilt's Innovation Center, built to support the development of innovative and creative solutions that change the world. From early-stage startups to fully-fledged technologies, the Entrepreneurship practice area at the Wond’ry offers resources for all faculty, students, staff and alums from Nashville-area colleges and universities, who are interested in learning how to grow a venture from the ground up. The Wond’ry offers three programs to help on the entrepreneurial journey: Ideator, Builder, and Founder. Completing a Wond’ry Entrepreneurship course with a STEM-related idea gives the potential for access to the National Science Foundation Innovation Corps (I-Corps) program. Additionally, our Wond’ry Mentor program connects entrepreneurs to industry experts in a variety of fields. Our region is poised to become a unique economic engine for the country. Which is why the Wond'ry is grounded in inclusive innovation accepting all ideas and seeking innovation across all industries and disciplines. Teaching innovation, teaching the process of entrepreneurship and teaching the start-up process is more important than picking winners. Founders who who understand the process and the pivot are more likely to succeed and funders are more likely to invest in sound innovation - success breeds success. What better way to ignite an innovation ecosystem than to build it upon the principle of share regional prosperity?
The lesson
Can you share a lesson your team learned from building The Wond’ry?
Not all founders need the same support at the same time! We seek to meet the founders where they are, and help them ask themselves the right questions to take the next step.
The update
What is something great that happened recently?
We have been selected as an NSF Hub for I-Corps. The NSF Mid-South I-Corps Hub is led by Vanderbilt University. With an intentional emphasis on inclusive innovation, the hub will accelerate the translation of groundbreaking university research outcomes into commercialized ventures that seed emergent, prosperous innovation ecosystems across the region. The hub spans four states and includes Vanderbilt University, University of Virginia, Jackson State University, George Mason University, Meharry Medical College, Tennessee State University, University of Louisville, University of Tennessee, Knoxville and University of Kentucky.
Your five minute mentor is:
Yesenia Sevilla
“How you handle your exit makes an incredible impact on everyone involved and on your future successes.”
-Yesenia Sevilla
What is one (big or small) problem that’s been on your mind that you wish someone would solve?
I wish we could start offering electric car charging at all major gas stations using solar panels mounted on the filling station rooftops.
What is something you learned that only experience could teach?
People speak of experience as this great teacher, and it is, but it is not exclusive of the passing of time. For me one lesson learned from experience (+ time) is how to look failure and loss head on and still succeed. I've lost or failed at retaining three jobs due to reorganizations/M&As. I learned that when faced with failure, how you handle your exit makes an incredible impact on everyone involved and on your future successes. Be remembered for your grace; leave a trail of fans and fond memories. Your life is an organic meander of opportunities and a fabulously handled failure can actually leave an incredibly positive impression.
What is a habit you’ve learned that you practice daily?
Write stuff down! Handwritten, digitally or dictated - capture your thoughts daily!
What do you want to accomplish that day, and did you do it? What can you move to the next day? What impactful thought, word, idea did you come across? Why did it impact you?
I don't write in full sentences and I don't even write in linear formats, I just capture thoughts and ideas and tasks. For me it's a chronicle of my productivity and a measure of my learning. It helps you see that you are accomplishing more than you think, even on the hard days. It's also important for recall. Not everyone has an ironclad memory! The easiest way to start? Just start, right now. Write stuff down.
What is your most unpopular business/startup opinion?
It's ok to separate the person from the idea. At the very beginning of the ideation process, I believe in stepping back from your idea and thinking in terms of validating or invalidating your idea. Using evidence-based decision making to move forward or NOT to move forward with an idea is better in the long term. Believing in someone and believing in their idea can be two different concepts and too often we get the two confused.
What is a fundamental value or belief that you think has made you successful?
"The Art of Enchantment" by Guy Kawasaki is a book that left an indelible mark on me. I truly believe that if in every interaction you have with others you seek to understand them, connect with them, build their trust, create a win-win outcome - create an enchanting experience - you've created success. Committing to this value is a long term investment in relationships and the dividends payoff over time. I have been striving to practice this belief for well over 20 years, and it is amazing what connecting can bring! Being successful for me is not just about my own goal attainment - it's about the satisfaction that I can contribute to the wellbeing of others.
🌈 Yesenia’s #weekly-win
Yesenia was a top-three finalist for Community Leader of the Year 2023 at the 14th annual NTC Awards.
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LaunchLetter is produced by StartupNash. StartupNash is a community group for founders and funders in Nashville and beyond. If you are part of the tech community and want to learn about Nashville startups, or you are a founder or funder looking for a supportive, remote first group, StartupNash is your space.
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