Traditional Business Skills: An interview with Mike McCarthy

Mike McCarthy is the founder of McCarthy Capital, an Omaha-based private equity firm. Prior to the 2010 Young Professionals Summit, Joe Olsen of Phenomblue sat down with Mike to talk about business skills, entrepreneurship…

Mike McCarthy is the founder of McCarthy Capital, an Omaha-based private equity firm. Prior to the 2010 Young Professionals Summit, Joe Olsen of Phenomblue sat down with Mike to talk about business skills, entrepreneurship, and more.

Here’s a quick synopsis of the interview:

  • We only learned to look for skills later on in the process – started out with very non-traditional skills
  • Looking for people with a passion for what they do
  • Looking for a product that has a wide audience and big market
  • The right people, with the right product, in the right markets – the numbers take care of themselves
  • Basic entrepreneurship rule: DNROC (do not run out of cash)
  • There’s no specific attributes which make people successful by background
  • Looking for people with a knowledge base, with a passion, and that can manage
  • Takes more courage than sense to start a business
  • We don’t value failure high enough in Nebraska
  • Culturally we need to get beyond whether we’re going to fail and spend more focus on whether we’re going to get started
  • Core strength that people don’t focus on: generating revenue
  • When building a team: look for differences rather than similarities
  • If you can only have two people, you better have one that can sell and one that can produce
  • Shared success is as important as shared wealth – investors want to be a part of successful ideas and successful businesses
  • The people with the most humility tend to end up with the most money
  • ADD is a big problem for entrepreneurs – lack of focus can be a great strength and a great weakness
  • Foundation of Omaha and of the country is entrepreneurs

This story is part of the AIM Archive

This story is part of the AIM Institute Archive on Silicon Prairie News. AIM gifted SPN to the Nebraska Journalism Trust in January 2023. Learn more about SPN’s origin »

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