Richard W. Rodriguez
Trey Bowles is a good example of what can happen if you just make time.
As a soon-to-be senior at Baylor, a friend asked him to help with his new business.
“I said, ‘I don’t have time,’” Bowles remembers. “I had two jobs.”
Well, he made time. The friend sold the dot-com company in eight months “for a ton of money.” He asked Bowles to move with him to Nashville to start another company. And they built another company.
“About the third company that I built, I was like, ‘Oh, wait, I think I may be an entrepreneur.’”
The taste was as fulfilling as a well-seasoned rib-eye. Today, Bowles’ avocation is helping other entrepreneurs build companies as the managing director of the Techstars Physical Health Fort Worth accelerator.
He is a member of Fort Worth Inc.’s The 400, the list of the most influential people and leaders in Fort Worth.
Techstars Fort Worth is in the midst of its third cohort. Founders from all of the world live here for three months for mentorship and introductions with potential investors.
“They love it,” says Bowles, a 40-something. “It's amazing to see people from Russia and the Ukraine and Chile and Nigeria. I mean, you name it, we have it from all over the world.”
Bowles describes his career as in three phases.
The first being an entrepreneur, beginning in college. He started building companies primarily in the tech and media space, but also in the video sharing space. Those included music companies and management companies.
“Basically, for about 20 years, I just did anything I got excited about and would teach myself how to do it, and then I'd build a company doing it.”
He calls his second phase his “give back phase,” focusing on building entrepreneurial ecosystems. For example, establishing an entrepreneurship department at SMU, as well as six nonprofits to help support ecosystem building. The Dallas Entrepreneur Center, aka the DEC Network, was another of his innovations. The DEC Center runs Create FW. With former Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings, he established a leadership development organization over there.
Three years ago, phase three began at Techstars.
“I've lived in 10 cities, places like New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, D.C., Birmingham, Nashville, Oklahoma City,” Bowles says. “No city I had lived in had the potential that DFW did to grow and expand. I think Fort Worth has even more potential to grow than Dallas does.”