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Breakfast with Sam Wyly

October 10, 2008

Sam Wyly is a well known Dallas billionaire who founded/owned/owns University Computing, Sterling Software, Maverick Capital, Bonanza Steakhouse, Michaels Stores and Green Mountain Energy.  Pam Gerber invited Scott and me to join Sam for a breakfast meeting this morning.  The title of Sam’s book, “Entrepreneur to Billionaire, 1000 Dollars & an Idea” really sums up his story.  Sam spent an hour talking about many of his startups - some successes and some failures (obviously more successes than failures).  Publishers Weekly sums up his book like this,

Entrepreneur to Billionaire“Country boy makes good in this down-home tale of self-made multimillionaire Wyly. In his humble post-Depression Louisiana roots, Wyly learned his first business lessons from football strategy, his father’s tiny newspaper business and his mother’s bargaining skills. A lucky meeting propelled him to the University of Michigan’s Business School and his first corporate job at IBM, where he had to work fast to keep from succumbing to culture shock as he discovered there ain’t no Bubbas in Michigan. Energetic and restless, he soon left IBM for Honeywell and then created his own technology companies, rescuing failing businesses, founding Green Mountain Energy and devoting himself to environmentalism. Citing Sam Walton as a hero and Ross Perot as a personal friend, Wyly stresses the power and privilege of self-creation and speaks honestly about what he’s learned: that failure is crucial to achieving success, independent thought is imperative, luck serendipitous and power useless unless it is wielded for good. Though the message is a good one, the meandering storytelling and not well-known author might make this book a hard sell to a trade audience.”

Looking back over my life in context with the current financial crisis, I couldn’t help but agree with Sam’s point, “failure is crucial to achieving success”.  The willingness to take risk and suffer the consequences or successes is vital.  The current market is being driven by fear, those who can look past the fear will see opportunity.  Now is the time to open your eyes and start realizing that value can be created from the current chaos.  Anyway, Sam is a very interesting man and an asset to our community here in Dallas.

Written by Alexander Muse · Filed Under Blog, Startups 

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