"I think an entrepreneur is somebody who sees something they want to exist, and, whether they know how or not, sets forth in a naive but confident way to bring it into being."
Mark McNally Tweet
Mark McNally is Founder and Chief Nobody at Nobody Studios, a new venture studio that’s revolutionizing the startup world for the emerging age of innovative destruction. His first startup went public on the Nasdaq in 1999, and his journey has since crossed 14 startups that have raised over $300 million and seen over $5 billion in exits. Now, with Nobody Studios, he’s addressing a critical gap in the startup world by de-risking investments in new companies — inviting anyone interested to bring their talent, influence, or capital to help create world-changing companies.
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Table of Contents
Thank you so much for giving us your time! Before we begin, could you introduce yourself to our readers and take us through what exactly your company does and what your vision is for its future?
Mark McNally: As Chief Nobody at Nobody Studios, I get to play—with an incredible team and community of supporters—in the space of bringing impactful new companies into being at a pace, scale, and efficiency that has never been attempted before.
We call ourselves a Crowd Infused™, rebel venture studio, and I’ll break that down in reverse order.
So as a venture studio, we create, develop, and optimize new companies in-house. We not only fund them, but we build the teams and provide all the resources to grow to the point where they’re ready for scaling. The rebel part is, we’re doing things very differently. We have a gnarly, audacious goal of building 100 compelling companies in just five years—and don’t ask me how many more beyond that.
And we’re building them in a way that’s very collaborative, so instead of teams competing for resources within the studio, they’ll be sharing them. We’re even selecting many of our company ideas based partly on their ability to support our other companies and accelerate our growth.
Then the other thing that’s very different is where Crowd Infused comes in. It means we’re leveraging the crowd throughout our company creation processes, from ideation to funding to concept to optimization and scale. We’re the first venture studio we know of to use crowdfunding (alongside conventional angel investments) to provide access for all to this kind of wealth creation vehicle.
And access for all extends globally in our invitations for talent to join us, regions and markets we’re planning to enter, and the culture we’re building that’s committed to true diversity, equity, and inclusion. As for our future, in the short term, we’re on the verge of launching Ovationz, our event talent marketplace with CEO Ray Leonard Jr. (the son of boxing legend Sugar Ray Leonard). And our crowdfunding campaign is launching soon as well.
Looking out to the horizon, I learned early on that if you have the right idea, the right people, the right execution, and a rock-solid “why” behind it all, the sky’s the limit. And that’s where we’re headed—global impact at a massive scale. We have fantastic momentum, and the excitement is growing as more people hear about us and our companies.
NO child ever says I want to be a CEO/entrepreneur when I grow up. What did you want to be and how did you get where you are today?
Mark McNally: It’s funny you say that because I actually was that precocious little kid who knew at five years old I wanted to be an entrepreneur. Growing up, I would tell my parents I was going to give Bill Gates a run for his money. I just knew I wanted to build things. I was fascinated by figuring out how things worked and how they were put together. Could I break them down, rebuild them, and make them better?
However, I didn’t go straight into business. I actually joined the military. I grew up in a family with an Air Force Colonel and always heard stories about the service. So that was in my blood, and I ended up joining an army special ops unit. That was a fantastic learning experience that gave me the opportunity to work creatively with a fairly autonomous, very tight-knit group to figure out how to accomplish a very complex mission.
So it was great training for becoming an entrepreneur, which of course I did end up doing after serving for six years.
As it turned out, my very first company took off like a rocket and went public on the Nasdaq in 1999 with a $4.5 billion market cap. I was employee eight and quickly rose up to the executive team as we grew to 800 people and headed toward our IPO. Since then I’ve been involved in 14 different startups in a range of industries. In terms of success, about a third of them have bankrupted, a third of them had an exit and succeeded, and about a third of them are still out there. Unfortunately, in this world, that’s a pretty good success rate.
There have been a lot of mistakes and disappointments along the way—the 2008 crash was a big blow, for example. But all along the way, burned into my mind was this idea that if you could do everything right end-to-end, you could build a sustainable, long-term company that has a massive impact on people, your team, and the world. And that’s what we’re doing at Nobody Studios.
Tell us something about yourself that others in your organization might be surprised to know.
Mark McNally: I’ve been pretty open-book with people, but some things may not always get across to everyone, so I’ll do a quick rundown. I’m a pretty global and well-traveled person who’s been all over the world many times. I’m fluent in Spanish, and I’ve personally built offices in Shanghai, Pakistan, Dubai, Mexico City, and London.
Aside from my special ops service, I was also a paratrooper. And I’m a civilian skydiver and pilot. I love all kinds of music; musicals and opera are some of my favorites. I also love theater, and I’m a closet screenwriter. I’m a passionate friend. And while I have not always been my absolute best at that role, I tend to go above and beyond for the people around me.
I’ve been dominated most of my life by positivity and a can-do attitude, and I’ve experienced unexpected low points as well. That’s created a tremendous empathy in me for folks that struggle—at any moment, for any reason. And it’s one of the reasons wellness is such a big focus in our companies at Nobody Studios.
What else can I tell you? My wife, Meritxell, is way out of my league—Harvard educated, speaks four languages, and a 10 on the Richter scale of beauty inside and out. Same as my boys, Diego and Alex. Both of them have more intelligence in their pinky than my whole body. And I just strive every day to be worthy of them and the other people around me.
Many readers may wonder how to become an entrepreneur but what is an entrepreneur? How would you define it?
Mark McNally: I think an entrepreneur is somebody who sees something they want to exist, and, whether they know how or not, sets forth in a naive but confident way to bring it into being. They have a deep faith that they’re supposed to play a role in making something happen that others can’t see.
And it doesn’t always have to be Elon Musk and electric vehicles. Somebody who says, “That’s a corner that needs a really special coffee shop,” can be a true entrepreneur if they see something that isn’t yet, find the resources, attract believers, and pull it together. You really have to be an evangelist, making people see something that doesn’t exist yet and have them work with you, support you, or invest in some way.
A lot of people build companies for the wrong reasons, mostly to make money. I don’t define them as entrepreneurs. I really believe that, aside from a few lucky ones, most of those folks will fail. An entrepreneur has to be motivated by something deeper, a “why” that helps them get through all the obstacles that show up on the path to fulfilling the vision.
It’s not for the faint of heart. Many entrepreneurs put too much on their plates, and it becomes a stressful career. I certainly have taken the weight of the world on my shoulders throughout my career. I feel it with the current venture too, but I believe there’s a different way. If you believe in what you’re doing, speak openly and honestly about it, don’t take no for an answer, and have faith, then the right people and support will come your way at the right time. With that, I believe most entrepreneurs can be successful.
What is the importance of having a supportive and inclusive culture?
Mark McNally: First, fostering diversity, equity, and inclusion is just the right thing to do—we fully believe in and are 100% committed to providing opportunity for everyone, period. There’s also a strong and well-researched business case for DE&I. Our Chief Culture Officer Sejal Thakkar, who is a passionate advocate for inclusion and civility in the workplace, talks about five key benefits.
- Variety of viewpoints increases adaptability
- Better customer service, leading to better customer loyalty
- Reduced legal expenses
- Better employee retention
- More effective execution
For Nobody Studios, as a globally distributed company, we have all kinds of cultural differences among our teams, and our goal is to ensure that anyone that comes into our world feels welcome, included, respected, and able to pursue their greatest passions. When people ask me how I define success, I tell them: the day some person in some country I’ve never been to sees a problem and launches a company using the vehicle that is Nobody Studios, and solves that problem—that’s when we’ll have succeeded.
How can a leader be disruptive in the post covid world?
Mark McNally: I can understand why people are concerned about the “post-COVID” world, but really if that’s the lens you’re looking through, you’re already way behind. What leaders really need to be looking at is how to navigate what’s coming, which I call the Age of Destructive Innovation.
Fundamentally, we believe that the world is going to face 5-10 major paradigm shifts as revolutionary as the rise of the internet—but moving much faster, and all colliding in the next decade or two. We’re going into an era of speed, innovation, change, and disruption that is going to be won by folks that go big and bold. Like never before, you’ve got to start on a path that’s truly compelling and meaningful.
It’s got to get you out of bed excited every day, where there’s no question: “This strikes my values. I love this. I want to do this again and again.” Because with anything short of that, you’re going to be building something that’s obsolete before you’re halfway through.
And on the flip side, you have to be flexible enough to adapt to changing conditions and market feedback. That means you need to listen to the crowd and keep things lean so you don’t overinvest in unproven ideas. At Nobody Studios, we’ve encapsulated this idea into our approach to company creation, which we call “Frugressive” (frugal + aggressive + creative). That’s our formula for building companies to thrive in this era, and it’s what I advise other leaders to embrace as well.
If a 5-year-old asked you to describe your job, what would you tell them?
Mark McNally: My job is to tell people stories that get them to create new things. I look at things in the world that I think could be better, things that should be fixed, and things that don’t even exist yet that should, and I tell people about them. The trick is to tell that story in a simple, clear way that gets people excited enough to become part of it.
Some people will hear it and just say, “That’s nice. Good luck.” But by telling the story over and over, I find the people who believe in it enough to help me bring it to life. Some of them bring money, others bring skills, and others help me tell the story to even more people. Then, as all the people gather, I watch a product, or even a whole company, come together where it didn’t exist before!
Share with us one of the most difficult decisions you had to make for your company that benefited your employees or customers. What made this decision so difficult and what were the positive impacts?
Mark McNally: We always knew we wanted to be “people-first” and create something special in that sense. And the boldest step we’ve taken so far has been our decision to ensure that anyone who’s in any of our companies gets equity across our entire portfolio.
It’s extremely unconventional. It requires a lot of work in regards to financing, stock option management, and legal considerations. And a lot of people have told me along the way, “You don’t need to do that. That’s just too much. Let’s do that later.” But we fought for it because I believe it’s going to create the best culture of truly special people being attracted to this journey, who won’t be inclined to look elsewhere.
We believe that across the economy, and especially in the technology startup space, talented people are the most important resource you can get today. It’s the main battleground in business for at least the next few decades.
This decision gives us an unfair advantage when it comes to talent. They’re going to bring their best ideas and passions and continue to innovate within this vehicle because they’ll be part of something long-term that could be way beyond their own scope of expertise. They’ll be rooting for the overall family of companies, and I think that’s going to lead to immeasurable impacts. The most obvious one is that it will continue helping us attract and retain world-class people, which I think will be the difference-maker for our vision.
Leaders are usually asked about their most useful qualities but let’s change things up a bit. What is your most useless talent?
Mark McNally: My wife would say I have a good singing voice, but I’ve never developed it. I don’t have the confidence to put it out there. So it’s a talent I have that I’m not using and doesn’t have a positive impact on my life. But it does mean a lot to me somewhere deep inside. Maybe I’ll change that and dust off the microphone here in the next few years and bring that talent to life!
Thank you so much for your time but before we finish things off, we do have one more question. If you wrote a book about your life until today, what would the title be?
Mark McNally: “The Memoirs of a Nobody”
Jed Morley, VIP Contributor to ValiantCEO and the host of this interview would like to thank Mark McNally for taking the time to do this interview and share his knowledge and experience with our readers.
If you would like to get in touch with Mark McNally or his company, you can do it through his – Linkedin Page
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