Sharing new ideas for a business can be scary, but that fear should not be a deterrent to pursuing new ideas anyways, according to Kevin Willer.
“The reality is, who cares what other people think?” Willer said. “The only thing that matters with an idea for a company is that there’s a market for it, that someone wants to use your solution, and hopefully buyers will pay for the solution.”
Boston College students crowded into the Edmund H. Shea Jr. Center for Entrepreneurship on Wednesday to hear from Willer, BC ’96, a general partner at the venture capital firm Chicago Ventures.
In the early stages of his career, Willer said he bounced from profession to profession in the tech world until he became a co-founder of the Google Office in Chicago.
“I was in tech for a decade working for Google, and Google was a small company, less than 200 employees,” Willer said. “Not that global juggernaut it is today. It was brutal. It was not fun. It was really hard. When I joined, it was me and another guy in a conference room. Small, little office … No windows, two desks, two phones, couple computers, and that was Google Chicago.”
After over ten years with the company, Willer left Google in 2011, to refocus his career on the world of venture capital.
Since 2013, Willer has been a partner at Chicago Ventures. The fund was created with the sole intent of boosting companies in the Chicago area and throughout the Midwest region.
When Willer’s team is evaluating business proposals, Willer said they often have to reject companies that become successful later on.
“Just getting people around you to support your idea and your concept is hard,” Willer said. “People say ‘your baby’s ugly’ sometimes, and it is what it is. Like I said earlier, [we] have to say no to 99 percent of the companies that we look at, and it’s a bummer, but some of those companies are really successful after we passed that, and so we are idiots, right?”
While there are many talented entrepreneurs, Willer said succeeding in the world of venture capital involves good timing and a little dumb luck.
“Here’s the biggest secret about it: it’s all luck,” Willer said. “So you put your solution on the market, maybe it doesn’t take off right away, but eventually the market comes to it. How do I know if the time is right? You just gotta go. Take your idea and build it.”
