Nashville Entrepreneurs Share Their Dumbest Decisions Ever

Spark Nashville,Marcus Whitney,Nick Holland,Populr.me,Moontoast,SouthernAlpha

Nick Holland (L) and Marcus Whitney (R) talk about the dumbest thing they’ve ever done (photo: NMI 2013)

Failure and dumb decisions are part of every true entrepreneurs life. If an entrepreneur goes through life without any failures, anyone telling them their babies are ugly and any dumb decisions, they’re doing it wrong.

Thursday night at 3rd and Lindsley in Nasvhille as part of Southern Alpha’s Spark Nashville event, seasoned local entrepreneurs Nick Holland (CentreSource/Populr.me) and Marcus Whitney (CTO at MoonToast), shared their dumbest decisions.

Both guests looked surprised when Southern Alpha Editor In Chief Walker Duncan asked them to share their dumbest decisions, but the surprise on their face made everyone quickly realize that they were going to actually share their dumbest decisions.

Holland’s centers around his days growing CentreSource. He had a bunch of developers sitting around on the payroll and needed something to do. Holland wanted it to be something creative and something that could make them some money so he had the developers re-do any Nashville website they wanted. The hope was that the businesses who owned the sites they chose would throw money at CentreSource for the new design. What really happened made for a great story.

Whitney’s dumb decision is one that has been a source of constant debate the last four years I’ve personally attended SXSW (3 as Thedroidguy 1 with nibletz). I can only hope that startups out there heed Whitney’s advice, unfortunately with SXSW two weeks away, there’s going to be quite a few startups in Whitney’s shoes come March 12th.

Check out the video for some entertaining and enlightening stories.

Nashville: Jumpstart Foundry’s Marcus Whitney Named CTO Of The Year By Nashville Technology Council

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(photo: marcuswhitney.com)

Marcus Whitney is a renaissance man of sorts when it comes to entrepreneurism and startups in Nashville and Boston Massachusetts. Some of his credentials include being an advisor and curriculum lead at Nashville’s Jumpstart Foundry accelerator where he traditionally fires up the troops on day one. He is also an advisor to several Nashville area startups, co-founder of Southernalpha.com and an overall leader in Nashville’s startup community.

It’s actually for his day job though, as the CTO of social marketing, commerce and analytics startup Moontoast that has earned him the title of CTO Of The Year by the Nashville Technology Council.

Moontoast was founded in 2008 as a social knowledge base provider that eventually led to the social marketing and analytics suite that they employ today to companies big and small including some on the Fortune 500. Their stable of top-shelf clients include branding power house Proctor & Gamble, Ford, Kirkland’s, and Universal.  Even Nashville country powerhouse record label Big Machine records uses Moontoast, you may have heard of their superstar Taylor Swift.

Whitney has grown to become an expert in the world of social and email engagement. Prior to starting Moontoast in 2008 he spent the previous four years of his career as Director of Technology and Partner at Emma. Emma is an email marketing firm that uses creative, out of the box approaches, to again engage their over 10,000 customers.

Whitney’s energetic personality and real life experiences have led him to be engaging in person as well. In different discussions with Whitney we’ve talked about how he and his team at Jumpstart Foundry are able to pull the real entrepreneur and founder out of a startup. Some startups come into the three month accelerator program with a great idea and a horrible pitch. Whitney is able to pull the real message out which has actually led to follow on funding for several program startups.

Whitney’s latest startup is Southernalpha.com a regional tech blog focused on high growth potential startups and technology in the southeast. They’re centralizing out of Nashville at the moment with plans to rapidly expand across the south east in the same way that Silicon Prairie news covers the Silicon Prairie.

Whitney was honored at the annual Nasvhille Technology Council Awards on October 23.

Linkage:

Moontoast is here

Jumpstart Foundry is here

SouthernAlpha is here

Everywhere else is here