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Dave Lundahl is Corvallis’ Entrepreneur of the Year!
InsightsNow President and CEO Dave Lundahl accepted the Entrepreneur of the Year award this year, which is given by the Corvallis, Oregon Chamber of Commerce as part of the annual “Celebrate Corvallis” event. The award recognizes service to the community through entrepreneurship, singling out individuals who have started successful businesses with high positive impact on the community.
Lundahl, whose talent for business organization showed early in life, comes by the role of entrepreneur naturally. Nevertheless, despite his history of innovation and leadership – starting with carnivals and mini-golf courses in his childhood backyard – Lundahl confesses that he never really saw himself as an entrepreneur starting out. “I never thought of things in business terms-- I just thought, ‘I have to do this.’” The way he sees it, entrepreneurship is more of a life philosophy than a task: it involves being a “doer,” having the ability to generate excitement and inspire others to work towards a common goal, and being “highly risk-tolerant.”
“Entrepreneurship is about having a vision for how to create value for your clients, and then creating a sustainable business model around that value.”
-Dave Lundahl, CEO and President
Entrepreneurship isn’t just about building a business, though – for Lundahl, it’s about taking an active role in building a community. “Just because you have a lot of wonderful things in this community … doesn’t mean that the community is going to be sustainable,” he says. “What is missing is entrepreneurship, to create a sustainable long-term business, the foundation for economic growth.” Providing that foundation, through community service as well as by bringing revenue into the community, is a large part of what drives him.
In order for all this to be possible, there’s another community that plays a vital role. Enabling and supporting the success of our business partners and investing in sustainable, long-term relationships is what Lundahl describes as InsightsNow’s mission. In providing value for clients and delivering on core values of trust, speed, insight, and certainty, InsightsNow has a sure foundation- and for Lundahl, this is an essential component of entrepreneurship. In sum, he says, “Entrepreneurship is about having a vision for how to create value for your clients, and then creating a sustainable business model around that value.”
Q: What does it take to be a good entrepreneur?
"Entrepreneurs are born entrepreneurs, I think. You have to have a certain type of hard-wiring – you have to be a “doer” and you have to be a self-initiator of things. You need to be able to get other people excited about doing, going somewhere, and then you need to have a sense that you must do it; you’re meant to do this. And then you’re so focused and intent on that goal that you become callous to the risk, because you end up taking a lot of risks."
Q: What is the biggest impact that InsightsNow has on the Corvallis community?
"It starts with the people… what this company means, and how we are all making it as it is. It’s not a top-down thing, it’s a bottom-up thing. How is it impacting the lives of every person? That’s one dimension… Another is contributing to this community in a big way. And the third is that hopefully we are inspiring other people in the community to take the same path, showing that it can be done."
Article by Michelle Funk