We’ve had our eyes on 1909, a co-working space, business incubator and accelerator in West Palm Beach, for a long time now.
Named after the year Palm Beach County was founded, 1909 is a creative community that nurtures entrepreneurs helping them turn their ideas into viable businesses.
It’s an important endeavor—what can be more exciting than helping those who dream and aspire?
That mission—to bring dreams to life, to create and grow entrepreneurs—speaks to us at the Carl Angus Desantis Foundation. We recently made a $50,000 grant to support a “Scale Up” initiative at 1909. The program is designed to help new businesses that have shown promise make it through the next phase of their development. The goal is to serve 300 local entrepreneurs by providing them with help at a stage where many businesses fail.
Candidates for this program have already made it through the incubation phase. They have customers and are generating revenue but need to scale their idea to survive.
This is often a stage that is perilous for bootstrapping entrepreneurs. They may need legal, accounting, technical and marketing advice but often can’t afford those services or don’t know where to turn. They are also at a stage where they can’t afford to make a mistake. Hire the wrong app developer and you may go out of business when they don’t deliver on time or on budget (or at all).
1909 is there to support the next generation of Palm Beach County entrepreneurs. They work with creatives, and small business owners offering education, community and a network of mentors who can be trusted to deliver.
They have created an elegant model and we at the Foundation are not the only ones who are noticing. 1909 has attracted a bumper crop of supporters.
We understand how important and how difficult entrepreneurship can be. We’ve seen success and we’ve seen failure. It’s a hard, hard road to travel. But these are the brave people who change our world.
When you spend time with entrepreneurs you pick up some valuable life lessons.
First, it’s not about ideas.
It’s about making ideas happen.
Second, entrepreneurship is about the courage to take risks. Entrepreneurs are not limited by other people’s imaginations, they persist, they find a way—always.
The founder of our Foundation is a case study of the grit it takes to succeed.
Carl DeSantis was working at Walgreens when he started what became Rexall Sundown, which grew into a dominant player in the vitamin industry. The business started as a mail order operation in Carl’s garage.
We were lucky to spend a lot of time learning from Carl. He showed us early mail order catalogs that he created hoping to earn the trust of consumers. He loved marketing, had a restless mind and a rock-solid belief in his instincts.
That confidence—not ego—but pure belief and faith came in handy when he dug in and made it his mission to turn Celsius into a mainstream brand. Celsius had many ups and downs and there are many different theories as to why the energy drink finally succeeded but there is one aspect of the story that enjoys universal agreement. Without Carl’s belief, the brand would have died.
So, when the Foundation toured 1909’s space in downtown West Palm Beach we were struck by the energy and spirit of entrepreneurship, and we thought of our friend Carl. He would like these people, we thought. He would relate to their dreams, desire and grit.
“These are our kind of people,” he would say us when we met like-minded people trying to build something of note.
One last thought about our friends at 1909. They are the dreamers who bring magic to our world.
Let’s support the dreamers, celebrate them and help them succeed. They won’t leave for greener pastures if we care for them and create communities where they find what they need to succeed. 1909 is doing this and doing it well. We are thrilled to be a small part.
