The Second Act - Magazine - Page 19
“What inspired us during our first venture
was very much the product. We were
deeply connected with our customers,
constantly striving to better understand
their problems so that we can deliver
compelling solutions to help them,” Cheng
says.
Product development still excites the
founders, but their most significant source
of inspiration and motivation during this
second act is the impact they can have
as leaders in a growing organization. As
Cheng and his partners graduated from
being individual contributors to leaders
and managers, they’ve already seen the
impact they can have on people’s lives and
careers.
“Lumen5 has been an employer that took
care of its employees through a global
pandemic and now a looming recession,”
says Cheng. “As they say, great power
comes great responsibility, and we’re proud
to offer stable employment for 50 brilliant
professionals during these turbulent times.”
Cheng admits that he and his team have
had some learning to do as Lumen5 has
grown. The 50-person team moves much
slower than the four-person team they
had had at Sniply, and he and his fellow
founders, who were accustomed to rapid
output, have been slowly learning to be
patient. He says patience is required to
build a strong foundation that supports
future growth.
He also believes that both passion and
practicality are essential for success.
“Passion is what keeps you going at it
across years and decades, but you can’t
eat passion for dinner, so practicality is
necessary to pay the bills and put food on
the table,” he says.
Cheng’s most significant piece of advice
to aspiring entrepreneurs is to always be
recruiting. While it isn’t necessarily the
founder’s job to build the business, he says
it absolutely is the founder’s job to build
the team that builds the business.
L e ssons
F r om Ser ial
ENtr ep r eneur s
NEXT 36 ALUMNI
Micheal Cheng at a NEXT Canada event held at
the Art Gallery of Ontario in June 2013
“In a way, NEXT was a class on entrepreneurship, and
the homework was to start a venture. We all learned a
tremendous amount through that experience, and we still
carry those lessons to this day, almost a decade later. I
strongly believe that there is no better education than
hands-on execution."
“With Lumen5, we’re much more deliberate about putting ourselves out there and building the
employer brand,” says Cheng. “The initial stages require great individual contributors, and the
scaling stages require great leaders and managers. It all comes down to people.”
Establishing good relationships can take months or even years. Still, Cheng firmly believes that
great people will create a great business, and building the team has been their most successful
strategy for ultimately building the business. “As a company grows, the founders have less control
over the ins and outs of the business,” he says. “The biggest impact we can have is to recruit and
grow our people so that they can make great decisions and drive high-impact strategies.”
Lumen5 is still growing, and Cheng has not made any immediate plans to start a third venture. He
and his team operated Sniply for five years between founding and acquisition, and with the scale of
Lumen5, he says it’s likely they’ll be looking at a far longer horizon before their journey is complete
this time around. “Based on pattern recognition, it seems likely that I’d start another venture, but
I hesitate to think so far ahead. All my focus and attention belongs strictly to Lumen5 in the here
and now.”
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