Perspective of the Day – Entrepreneur is Not a Job, It’s an Identity – The Bison Ices Story

Being an entrepreneur is not a job, it’s an identity—and for many of us entrepreneurs, our business savvy begins in college. My friend Randy and I—who was later one of the first people on board for my company IncentOne—were in the same Management 101 class as undergrads at Bucknell, which was the first class that business students took.

The course taught organizational behavior by having students run a real business: you had to elect officers, dream up a concept, and make a pitch for a loan. The grade was based on profit. Most of the businesses from this class over the years were t-shirts or hot dogs at frat parties.

We came up with “Bison Ices.” Bucknell’s nickname is “The Bison” and the business idea was portable Italian Ices all over campus.

I was elected CEO and Randy was elected Director of Operations. A few engineers put their engineering degrees to work and rigged bicycles so we could pedal around freezers that could hold three vats of Italian Ices. We were everywhere. On a moment’s notice, we could pedal our ices (literally) to a crowd. Sporting events. Fraternity parties. Association events. You name it. It was common for our drivers to call back to the home base and say “We’ve got an emergency—we’re out of blueberry!” Our delivery team would pedal the product to the various locations. I think my tongue was blue all semester because every night the vats would come back to our office at the end of the evening shift, and we would eat the last two inches of Italian Ices left in each.

Bison Ices was a huge success. From what I hear, it is still one of the most successful businesses from that class. Although I didn’t know it then, it was also a snapshot of our future. Other than a chance meeting here and there, Randy and I lost touch for the balance of our Bucknell years.

One day, I was working out in a gym in Hoboken when I noticed a guy wearing a Bucknell sweatshirt. I introduced myself and realized it was Randy. We started working out together, and although IncentOne was still a set of ideas swirling in my head, I told him about the incentive idea. He mentioned that he worked for a publishing company and they asked him to head their new division using this thing they called “the Internet” (it was 1998). I asked if he was interested in helping me flush this idea out and what role the internet might play.

Randy called me a few days later and said he’d love to. We would meet after work, go to the gym, and then noodle and noodle and noodle—boy, was that fun! We felt like we were having a secret meeting, and no one knew that we were about to change the world. After a year of noodling, Randy became our first employee as Director of Operations.

Go figure—the CEO and Director of Operations of Bison Ices were now the CEO and Director of Operations of IncentOne. We were off to the races!