“Take a chance and #FollowYourCalling, and you will experience life beyond your imagination.”

Dr. Simon Mak
Executive Director
SMU’s Caruth Institute for Entrepreneurship 
.…on why you should dive in as an entrepreneur, via LinkedIn.

Besides his role at the Caruth Institute, Dr. Mak is a professor of practice in the Department of Strategy, Entrepreneurship, and Business Economics at the SMU Cox School of Business, and much more.

The Cox School is ground zero of North Texas entrepreneurship this week, as the site of Dallas Startup Week.

Mak is one of SMU’s leaders in researching blockchain. He created an MBA class called Blockchain Entrepreneurship, where he taught about CryptoKitties as one of the first NFT (Non-Fungible Token) startup business models. He’s traveled to London, Berlin, Malta, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Israel, Beijing, and Shanghai researching blockchain startups, and formed Genesis Blockchain Academy, LLC, a startup supported by the SMU Incubator.

Writing in LinkedIn, Mak says “I felt a special pull to this job, a calling if you will. So I went against common wisdom and advice and followed my calling, not really knowing what I was getting myself into.”

More than 18 years later, he says working at SMU has blessed him “much more than I could have ever imagined,” adding, “So my encouragement to you today is to take a chance and #FollowYourCalling, and you will experience life beyond your imagination!”

For all of you attending Dallas Startup Week and beyond, Mak has one other last word: “Best wishes in Entrepreneur-land!”

For more on what’s new and next in North Texas, check out Every Last Word.

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R E A D   N E X T

William Spears, founder and CEO of Dallas-based sustainability solutions firm Cenergistic, has given SMU the largest donation from a non-alum in its more than century-long history. The gift will be used to set up the William S. Spears Institute for Entrepreneurial Leadership within the Cox School of Business, as well as the Spears Accelerator, to help get student- and faculty-formed businesses off the ground, and other entrepreneur-supporting efforts.

Want to map your innovation-to-market commercialization path or apply for federal money through the $4 billion America’s Seed Fund program? Or maybe you’re an entrepreneur seeking to validate your customer’s needs. The Texas SBDC Technology Commercialization Center wants to help.

SMU’s Arts Entrepreneurship Program has won a major national innovation award for pursuing its North Star mission: “to end the starving artist stereotype.” How well are they succeeding? One recent graduate’s startup just had a valuation of over $50 million.

Read “who said what” in our roundup of quotes about all things North Texas, including John Goff of Goff Capital; SMU’s Dr. Simon Mak; CITI apprentice Rasheda Walker; McKissack and McKissack’s Deryl McKissack; Articulation Art’s Lesli Marshall; Hillwood’s Reid Goetz; Dude Perfect’s Coby Cotton; Strategic Partnerships’ Mary Scott Nabers; and more.

Global Entrepreneurship Week Fort Worth kicks off November 7-12 with an opening party, a pitch competition, a State of Entrepreneurship luncheon, and lots more for founders and entrepreneurs to sink their teeth into.