He is William Keyser

The Startup Owl is me: Will Keyser.  I am the Managing Director of Venture Founders LLC and creator of the Startup Owl website.

I am a veteran entrepreneur myself and have the scars to prove it. What you need to know is that I have been helping other people start and develop companies and non-profit organizations for the last 20 years in the USA and Europe. It’s my passion and my work. I can be there for you, too.

The work I do is generally with values-driven clients with a powerful sense of wanting to change the world in which they work. They have been as varied as an arboretum in France, a green fashion retailer in Durham NC, an online fitness business in Boulder CO, a leadership development company, in South Africa.

Venture Capital

So it’s no surprise that I was on the board of a venture capital firm that had a mission of creating and preserving jobs, rather than making fortunes for shareholders, though it continues to make profits—retained and re-used in the business, not distributed to shareholders.

I am still directly involved with doing a startup myself—with a long-time friend and business associate. The company, Eyes2Health LLC, presently in hibernation, detects diseases of aging at the earliest time using low-cost, non-invasive diagnostics that utilize the many biomarkers that are present in the human eye—the body’s only transparent organ.

Venture Founders LLC is based in Putney, Vermont and the company is founding B Corporation. B Corporations are a new type of corporation which uses the power of business to solve social and environmental problems. Venture Founders has clients across the USA and around the world.

First venture at 10

My first entrepreneurial venture was at 10 years of age—trading with weekenders on the turnpike back into New York City from Long Island where I lived—selling them bunches of lilies of the valley!

Entrepreneurial blood runs in my veins. I have merchant banking on one side and rope manufacturing on the other. My earliest US ancestor-entrepreneur was Assur Levy, an immigrant to New Amsterdam (NYC) in 1650.

AdVentures

Educated in the UK, USA and France, I attended the University of Westminster (UK) and the London College of Communication (UK), as well as l’Université de Besançon (France), and l’Université de Lille (France).

After participation in Outward Bound Mountain School (I did Outward Bound again, sailing off the coast of Maine in an open boat, when I was 69) and an Arctic expedition, I did my military service as an officer in the British Army Intelligence Corps. I have been adVenturing ever since (taking up cross country skiing at 70, for example, learning alongside a 2 year-old).

Backed into business

After a number of non-career jobs (interpreting, teaching, farm laboring, taxi-driving, journalism…), I ‘backed into’ business when I took on the responsibilities of marriage and family.

Soon I found that business was engaging, and simply a special form of social organization with a well-defined purpose. The objections I had built up through student days were not overcome, but transformed into benefits. With several decades of experience, I now believe that entrepreneurs and small business can make major collective contributions to social and economic development.

Entrepreneurship

Always aiming to have my own business, I worked in several small entrepreneurial companies, moving up to senior management. I was appointed business development manager of a major international management and IT consulting firm (Sema, now Atos Origin, a company believing that sustainability must be embedded within the very DNA of an organization).

I was seconded from my company for a couple of years to be a senior government official in the field of national economic development in the UK and I have written/edited books on public enterprise and other socio-economic issues—you can see a list at Bookfinder.

On return to consulting practice, I set up a new subsidiary of the firm—a sort of out-of-town try-out for my own enterprise focusing on socio-economic consulting assignments, such as public manpower policy, state business, future-casting. It was set up with ‘phantom stock’, an idea that came about to head me off from starting the venture on my own. The business was initially housed within a business school.

My own venture

After a few years and with my partner, I became an entrepreneur myself, establishing and growing a company in a similar field, over 11 years. The business eventually had about 30 people, with about $4m a year in sales.

It was the UK member of the Foresight Group, whose members helped to speed up the process of innovation and change in large companies, drawing on the energy and drive of internal entrepreneurs (intrapreneurs).

Our firm’s clients included banks, petroleum companies, food manufacturers, engineering firms, utilities, health care, hi-tech innovators and many others.

Business School

In 2009, I became a Faculty Partner on the MBA in Managing for Sustainability at the Marlboro College Graduate School in Vermont, where I have taught courses on People & Teams, Business Strategy and now Entrepreneurship. I have also been providing voluntary help to a range of small startups. These have included an online holiday accommodation agency, a botanical theme park, an organic cotton clothes designer and others. I created and then sold Corsica Isula, a Corsican regional website, ranked #1 by the top 10 search engines worldwide.

My long career interest in business startup and entrepreneurship resulted in the establishment of Venture Founders, where I have been able to help others implement their visions of social and sustainable progress.

Community Service

I have served on many professional boards in a voluntary capacity: an international management association, a regional employers’ federation, a European management association, and national institutes for linguists and public relations practitioners. I have served on boards of community organizations, in culture, radio and sailing. Currently I am on the Board of the Brattleboro Food Coop, a $16m 2-store food retailer.

I am consultant to Community Capital of Vermont (offers financing and other assistance to businesses that do not yet meet all the requirements for traditional bank financing); a member of the Vermont Entrepreneurship Collaborative (a variety of voices, perspectives, and ideas on Vermont entrepreneurship and sustainable local economies). I serve on the advisory committee of the annual Applied Mindfulness Conference.

I am also a Reparative Probation panelist at the Brattleboro Community Justice Center – a community organization where citizens work together to find ways to resolve conflict peacefully, using primarily Restorative Justice principles and practices.

Otherwise known as the Startup Owl–“a wise old bird”