The Oxford Conference Center hosted the third annual Innovate Mississippi’s Discovery Luncheon earlier today. The seminar was held for entrepreneurs in the Oxford area and served as the kick-off event for the Ole Miss Venture Launch Weekend.
Keynote speaker, Bill Rayburn, is well known to the Oxford community for founding FNC, and he was once a professor in the business school at Ole Miss. Rayburn presented a vision for Oxford’s future as a technological hub, with entrepreneurs as the centerpiece of that plan.
The mortgage technology “pioneered real estate collateral information technology” and was sold for $475 million in 2015. Rayburn has since founded a new venture, Mortgage Trade. Rayburn talked about the tools necessary to build a successful community with the help of entrepreneurs.
“Everyone wants to be like Silicon Valley. I care about building a start-up community [in Oxford],” Rayburn said. “We need to identify entrepreneurs because not everyone is a true entrepreneur. Culture is a big deal in a start-up community, and we have that. We have the canary arts, performing arts; we’ve got lots of things. But, what we need to do is leverage that, and we need to have more and more culture. The same reasons you come to Oxford are the same reasons that software companies want to be in a specific area.”
An obvious advantage Oxford holds is being a university town. There should be plenty of young people eager to enter the workforce in a place where the cost of living is lower than other regions of the country.
“We need access to universities and engineers. We have access to three engineering and computer science programs,” he said. “We can attract engineers. If you get a job in Silicon Valley, they’ll pay you $100,000 a year. You can’t get a nice apartment out there with what they’re going to pay you. Here, you’ll earn something comparable, and you can buy a house. It may not be on the Square, but you can buy a house or rent a nice apartment.”
Speaking directly to entrepreneurs in the audience, Rayburn spoke of how one can’t be afraid to fail or worry about what other people say.
“I knew they were laughing at me; they’re not laughing now. If you’re an entrepreneur in this room, and you’re thinking about doing a deal, people are going to laugh at you, throw rocks and everything else like they did to me. But, I didn’t care,” he said.
Rayburn urged the crowd to be sure they are willing to undertake the demanding process of starting a company from the ground up. He noted that while FNC was a success, it didn’t take place overnight. It took 16 years for his hard work to finally pay off, and Rayburn pointed out that when you’re an entrepreneur, success or failure is up to the individual.
“People think that they’re going to start a company, and they’re going to make a living and quit. You need to stay employed where you are, if that’s what you think,” he said. “It’s a long, hard road; and if you think that people are going to make it happen for you, you’re kidding yourself. You have got to make it happen if you’re going to be an entrepreneur.”
Karen Kurr, owner of No Time to Cook, also spoke at today’s luncheon. Kurr is a local entrepreneur who went from selling food out of her home to getting her own frozen meals in Kroger stores across the country.
“I didn’t know that I needed help, but I did. I’m here to tell you, you can’t afford to not be involved with this city, community and this state because of what they’re doing for entrepreneurs and the resources they’re giving you,” Kurr said. “We owe it to one another to support one another, mentor one another and to share the information we have with one another.”
Among the audience members were Ole Miss students and entrepreneurs Pontus Anderson and Georgia Norfleet. The pair has created a start-up company named Myra Mirrors. The company works to implement smart-device technology into mirrors in homes. As young entrepreneurs in the Oxford area, they both were interested in Rayburn’s vision, specifically about his hope to create 10,000 jobs in Oxford over the next ten years.
“It was great to see how big of an investment Oxford is putting in itself, doing what Silicon Valley is doing by keeping the wealth that they’re growing within themselves,” Anderson said. “That’s something we’re excited about because we’re trying to stay here for a little bit longer and see what we can do within the community.”
The luncheon concluded, and the 24-hour Ole Miss Venture event kicked-off. This event gives students the chance to meet others interested in partnerships and networking to fuel the start-up community in Oxford. More than 50 people (mainly students) are signed up to participate in the event.
“Entrepreneurs can come together with folks who have different skills to collaborate over business ideas and move forward with them to create something viable that they can move forward with,” said Tasha Bibb, a representative for Innovate Mississippi.
The Ole Miss Venture Weekend is the beginning of the Big Bad Business series, which will take place over the next eight months.
Steven Gagliano is a writer for HottyToddy.com. He can be reached at steven.gagliano@hottytoddy.com.
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