Patrick McQuown | Are You the Cow that Gives Milk or Steak?
Patrick serves as the executive director of entrepreneurship at Towson University. The first time I ever spoke with Patrick McQuown he talked about the importance of being fully committed to your business if you want to be a successful entrepreneur.
He used the metaphor of the type of products produced by a cow. There are some cows that give milk and there are some cows that give steak. The cows that give milk are involved in the process, but the ones that give steak are fully committed. Just like how you need to be committed to become an elite level athlete, you also need to bring that same level of commitment to your post-athletic career pursuits if you want to be successful.
After listening to my interview with Desiree Melfi Bozzo, Patrick connected me with Former Syracuse Quarterback, Terrel Hunt and he invited me down to TU to record this interview on why athletes make great entrepreneurs and meet the fellows in his StarTUp Accelerator.
The StarTUp Accelerator, an intensive eight-week, cohort-based fellowship where selected fellows take residency and work in a collaborative space to accelerate their ventures. Terrel Hunt is participating in this program while working on his Good Choice Productions venture highlighted in episode 163.
Patrick launched his first company Proteus in 1996, working out of his dorm room at George Washington University. He started Proteus with $1,000 and no outside funding. Proteus grew into a mobile media industry leader and was first in the world to create an application that allowed users to send short text messages from a Web site to a handset. Proteus is also responsible for creating the text-polling for the reality television show American Idol. His second startup, SinglePoint, raised $50M in venture capital and deployed two of the largest-ever messaging campaigns—one for the 2008 Summer Olympics and one for Obama for America.
Below you will find more talking points of this interview:
Stories behind Proteus and SinglePoint.
Why athletes make great entrepreneurs.
Impressive athlete entrepreneurs Patrick has come across through his work in Academia.
The venture creation process or lack there of…
Do you need school to become an Entrepreneur?
What collegiate athletic programs could be doing better to prepare athletes for life after sports.
Industries Patrick encourages aspiring entrepreneurs to work in.
