At a conference billed as a “celebration of the entrepreneurial mindset,” opening keynote speaker Gregory Shepard said the first thing entrepreneurs have to embrace is failure. 

“Success is stumbling from failure to failure,” said Shepard at the April 11 Bryant University Northeast Entrepreneurial Conference, sponsored by the university’s Collegiate Entrepreneurs Organization (CEO) chapter. “It's really another word for progress.” 

Shepard, founder of StartupScience.io, sold one of his startups, Affiliate Attraction, to eBay for $925 million, but was far from an overnight success.  

Self-described as being on the autism spectrum with a learning disability, Shepard grew up in a California mountain home with no running water or electricity.  

His first business failed, yet Shepard went on to found 12 companies, get a Ph.D., become a Fulbright scholar, and wrote a book, The Startup Lifecycle: The Definitive Guide to Building a Startup from Idea to Exit.  

“The book was actually a result of a five-year research project of trying to understand why and how founders failed,” he said. “If you think about struggle, it is evolution. The things that survive are those that struggle. You ever see a tree growing straight through rocks? That is an entrepreneur. You guys are the Navy SEALS of business. There is nothing harder than entrepreneurship.” 

Shepard said that 90 percent of entrepreneurs fail, with half of those failures happening in the first 18 months and the rest within three to four years of launch. 

"The first thing I found when I looked at founder failure was that founders didn't know where they were going or where they were,” Shepard says.   

“Success is stumbling from failure to failure. It's really another word for progress.” 

For example, startup founders should know from day one who they want to buy their company, he said. “A company that's buying your company buys your company for what's called a synergy,” Shepard explains. “A synergy is either to make money or save money. Building a company without an acquirer in mind is like building a product without a customer.” 

Many founders also make the mistake of focusing too much on financials — which are based on retrospective data — and not enough on understanding the startup lifecycle or what their valuation drivers are — “the things that create value for your company,” he said.  

The innovation life cycle, where the product is being created, is also where value begins to be created, Shepard says. The startup life cycle, which he describes as entrepreneurs’ “GPS,” starts with a defined vision, continues with going to market and product development, and then to standardization, growth, and exit. 

During a one-hour session, Shepard guided budding entrepreneurs through various aspects of starting and running a company, from understanding their business’s foundational pillars to key performance indicators and hiring people who align with their startup vision and culture.  

“The idea is an art,” he said. “Building a business is a science.” 

“The idea is an art. Building a business is a science.”

Even with a well-thought-out structure, the secret sauce for success remains intangibles like focus and drive. “Enthusiasm is contagious. Optimism is the biology of hope,” said Shepard. “If you don't think you're going to achieve something, you're going to lose your drive.” 

Discipline is the linchpin, he emphasized.  

“When everything else fails, and you're tired and you've got to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, that's discipline,” Shepard said. 

The conference is designed to give aspiring entrepreneurs the tools and mindset to succeed. The day-long event featured a second keynote from Julie Lyle, who has built leading global brands and teams for both startups and the world's largest companies. It offered a wealth of practical advice to entrepreneurs, including Bryant students and attendees from other schools and the local business community.  

Troy Byrd ‘00, a consultant and founder of Bryant’s Global Entrepreneurship Program, guided attendees through the process of becoming a “superconnector” and using relationships to build their businesses. 

Making connections is about being generous, said Byrd. “Generally, you want to start off by offering something before you ask for something,” he said.  

“It's not only who you know, but how you connect them,” said Byrd, who advised entrepreneurs to go through all of their contacts strategically to determine who would be a good fit for others in their network. 

“Everybody’s looking for something, and if you can provide that, you'll be in demand,” Byrd said. “I want to tap into the mindset of a superconnector, looking at human connections as a competitive advantage.” 

“It's not only who you know, but how you connect them."

John Hill, vice president of story for the entrepreneur marketplace Whop, came to BUNEEC with both an inspiring story and a toolkit.   

Hill launched his first company in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1997 and has worked in higher education and the tech world for companies like LinkedIn, Techstars, and — since August 2024 — Whop, which he described as “breaking down barriers to entrepreneurship” by providing an easy-entry platform for marketing new online businesses with no upfront costs. 

Hill outlined four traits of successful entrepreneurs: adaptability, resiliency, competitiveness, and curiosity, and provided attendees with a digital entrepreneurship toolkit developed while he was at Techstars.  

Drawing upon his experience as a higher education evangelist at LinkedIn, Hill provided step-by-step instruction and examples of how to use the site to build a network and connections. 

“Your most important affiliations are friends and family,” he said, followed by college classmates and alums, coworkers, and members of professional groups.  

Often, however, it’s not the people you know but rather the people your network knows that can help grow your business. “Eighty-five percent of connections on LinkedIn are at the second level,” he says. 

Using LinkedIn’s search tools, Hill demonstrated that anyone with a sufficiently developed network likely already has connections to a venture capitalist, angel investor, or other potential funder within their orbit. 

At Whop, Hill also focuses on higher education. He recruits student entrepreneurs and institutions to establish a presence on a site that has seven million users and just passed $1 billion in revenue generation.  

The site hosts “anything you can think of that could be a business,” Hill said, with no cost for starting a site and charging founders 3 to 4 percent on the back end based on sales. 

“Try something out. The market will tell you if it doesn’t work.” 

“You can launch a company on our site in 15 minutes,” he said.  

Harkening back to Shepard’s opening session, Hill noted that the no-risk launch model means that entrepreneurs can use the platform to test concepts without risking capital if they fail to launch with buyers.  

“Try something out,” he advised. “The market will tell you if it doesn’t work.”