My day job is at Lighthouse Capital, a venture capital fund, and on the side my partner, Ben Munoz, and I have built a network of patient support sites for people with rare diseases called Ben’s Friends. This post is the first in a series on Entrepreneurship for The Daily Love.
The happiest people I know are the ones that work for themselves. I was lucky; I grew up in a family business and got to see it first hand. My mother bought into a tiny home accessories and furniture store called Elegant Clutter when I was young. Who would have known that my mom and her partner, two working mothers, could build a business that gave them and their employees joy and supported their families at the same time?
Who could have known? The answer? No one, not even them. But they dipped their toe into the water and started Elegant Clutter anyway. Forget business plans and financial projections; they knew they would love it, so they started it.
This is how a startup begins. You do something, no matter how small, and you are on your way. Take the first step. That first step will come to you in strange ways. For my mother, she was keeping Elegant Clutter’s accounting books while staying at home with my brother and me. That was how her relationship with her partner began, and then she took the plunge.
For me it came in the form of a near-tragedy. My classmate from Kellogg Business School, Ben, had an AVM, something similar to a brain aneurysm. Ben had emergency surgery and thankfully survived. While recovering, Ben was isolated and lonely, and because he had a rare condition, he couldn’t find others who had an AVM. After searching all over his town and then the Internet, Ben decided to bring those people to him. Ben started AVMSurvivors, a social network for people with AVM’s. Ben asked me to help him spread the word, and I was member #10.
Today there are 3,000+ members of AVM survivors and we have helped thousands more.
Starting AVMSurvivors was our first step, but a month later we realized how many people we were helping and started a couple more networks: Trigeminal Neuralgia Support & Ataxia Support. Before we knew it, we were at 25 networks and helping tens of thousands of people with no other options.
My payback for that first step? It’s the pride and love I feel every day when I read the thank you emails from our members.
Take your first step today. Payback will begin immediately.
Much love,
Scott Orn
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Scott is a partner at Lighthouse Capital, a venture capital fund in Silicon Valley. You can follow Scott Orn on twitter at @ScottOrn and read more about Ben’s Friends and the 25 rare disease online support networks we run. Visit the Lighthouse Capital website here.
