Today's Entrepreneur: Cory Jones

Entrepreneur

DINKlife

DINKlife

DINKlife

Little in life is more fulfilling than building something new that will help others

DINKlife, Qwiki, TaskRabbit, UpOut, TrunkClub

Entreneurship and innovation are by nature the boundless shaping of your own path. One could only be frustrated by a lack of ideas, which, gratefully has never been my handicap.

The rewards are just as boundless, defined by the individual and culminating in self-actualization.

Lack of understanding of the market and customer.

1. Plan to acquire more customers, partners and team members than you expect to need. Quantity is a multiplier on quality, without one of them you have 0. 
2. Plan to spend more money than you expect to need. When you've never done something before, the odd critical component will be missed in planning. 
3. Plan to consume more time than you expect to need. See #2.

Born and raised in the Dallas area, Cory gained his competitive edge as a powerlifter at the University of North Texas, shortly thereafter achieving his greatest claim to fame thus far - achieving the title of Texas Strongest Man (the plastic trophy doesn’t have his name on it, but we believe him). Cory cut his professional teeth as a citizen of the free standing country that is Accenture; learning to travel and spend per diems, and a work hard/work hard mentality that has stuck with him ever since.  

Going on to work in a dizzying array of industries, and diving into everything from marketing to retail management to productivity consulting (he insists he’s sorry for that big layoff in 2003), Cory claims during the span of his career to have single-handedly sold at least 1 phone line, 2 hotel rooms, 97 strawberry and banana smoothies, and 19 full palettes of treated 4X6 redwood.

Having defeated all TX stereotypes - he rarely wore boots, wasn’t a fan of Keith Urban and owned a pickup for only a short time (and it was a compact) – Cory felt he’d done his part and departed The Republic with Katelyn, moving to downtown San Francisco in 2009 to start DINKlife. When not reliving the enormity of his accomplishments with the rest of us, you can find Cory fretting over the header size of a DINKlife email, enjoying a Chicago pizza over an 80’s action flic, or planning how he’s going to fit in his two-seater Nissan after this next pizza.