The Somewhat Short Story of Blakey G.
I love business adventures … and I’ve had a few!
In the 90’s, while living in the Washington, DC area, I enthusiastically launched my first startup, a tech services company. I called it … The Info-Age Group. What a majestic name. And it was a group too. It’s hard to say no to a group when it comes knocking on your door. Via The Info-Age Group, I installed and maintained local area networks and off-the-shelf software for small businesses.
It was a temporary moment in heaven. I had no ingenious plan to conquer the galaxy. No world-changing big idea. No mentor. No dreams of billion dollar IPO’s dancing in my head. No 20-page business plan. Only a wee bit of my own money (and not enough as it turned out). But I’d launched my own startup! And that in itself was a grand freakin’ mission accomplished.
Thus began my Adventures in Business Land … and my semi-addiction to startups – a dependence for which a 12-step program apparently doesn’t xist. Four very long years later that first startup served as my gateway to Hell and Damnation as I witnessed the crashing and burning of my starship. The “U.S.S Info-Age Group” took heavy fire from all sides and eventually went down in flames.
And as the Captain of this fastly sinking ship, I went down with it … mind, body, soul. The Info-Age Group was only a mere tiny, miniscule speck in the business cosmos . So its crash and flameout was quite spectacularly, uh, un-spectacular. But to me, it was a super-catastrophic event on the upper regions of the Richter scale.
Welcome to the wonderful world of business my boy. Welcome! Welcome!
So I recently launched my new podcast show … “Outside The Valley”. Outside the Valley seeks out interesting tales of founders, investors, and community builders creating tech startup stories that lay mostly outside of the typical, well-established startup hubs like Silicon Valley, Boston, Seattle, … etc. I look forward to having conversations with people all across these 50 United States, and maybe even some foreign lands too.
I also launched The Looney Executive blog to share my personal business stories, provide my own unique perspective on biz topics, and to bring just a little bit of levity and entertainment to my small little corner of the business universe.
A little over a year ago, I surveyed the tech landscape in the Dayton, OH region. I saw that there was no real energy converging around the idea of building a vibrant tech startup scene. And with some brand spanking new startup ideas of my own kicking around in my devilish little brain, I desired to be in a place where people wanted to ignite a tech startup hub. A place where billion dollar dream IPO’s and gargantuan buyouts would be possible one day.
I wanted to sip Merlot, guzzle coffee, and a chomp on whole grain donuts with looney, strange people that thought like me. People that had crazy ideas banging around. So I launched a new group called IgniteTech as a vehicle to bring together like-minded folk wanting to launch a tech idea, connect with other founders, invest in crazy concepts, or simply desiring to help build a new chapter of tech startup adventures in SW Ohio.
Here’s a short list of my other eclectic business adventures:
- Created and hosted a business TV show
- Blew up a 2nd tech venture before it even launched (hot diggity … now that takes some real damned skill!)
- Executive-produced a corporate web TV series
- Created, produced and hosted 4 podcast shows
- Worked as an SBDC consultant in Santa Monica, Van Nuys, and Pasadena ( Los Angeles County)
- Managed or co-managed about $10,000,000 worth of tech projects
Now of course I have many more adventure stories to tell. Some I’m even living as you read this. But patience please … not too much too soon.
So I guess you’ll just have to read my blog to be further informed and perhaps even a little entertained on occasion.
Don’t Forget … Stay Looney My Friend!
— Blake Glenn aka Blakey G.
blake@looneyexecutive.com
