The hunt for the next CEO of the Nashville Entrepreneur Center was, in some ways, a “reality check.”
That’s per Mark Montgomery, an EC board member, member of the CEO search committee and well-known Nashville music-tech entrepreneur. While Montgomery’s early suggestion that the committee should target someone like Richard Branson was largely meant in jest, he did say the fact that no one was desperate to leave Google to come manage the Nashville Entrepreneur Center was “a little disappointing.”
“We think a lot of our ecosystem,” Montgomery said. “But comparatively, we’ve got a lot of work to do.”
On the other hand, Montgomery said, the lineage, resume and rolodex of the new CEO, Stuart McWhorter, made him an easy unanimous choice of both the search committee and the board.
When McWhorter came in to interview he’d clearly “done his homework,” Montgomery said. In particular, he said, McWhorter was able to very effectively dissect the strategic plan recently laid out by outgoing CEO Michael Burcham and the EC's board, and identified areas where he would focus, along with others where he would not. (That emphasis on keeping the center sound financially and working efficiently was one of the first things McWhorter mentioned to me the day his appointment was announced.)
“He was just very practical,” said Montgomery, who, while acknowledging his own penchant for non-practicality (see: Richard Branson suggestion), saw wisdom in that strategy.
It’s not that McWhorter doesn’t plan to swing for the fence, he said, it’s just that “you also have to load the bases up before you can swing for the fence.”
But it wasn’t just his practicality that made McWhorter a strong choice. The list of candidates did include some from the West Coast, but those applicants didn’t have the market intelligence and local connections needed to run the center, Montgomery said.
And there could be another use for that coastal talent down the road, Montgomery added. While it’s up to McWhorter now to decide how to run the center, Montgomery said there were lots of discussions during the search about how some of those applicants might benefit the local market in a different role, and those names have been passed on to McWhorter.
Overall, Montgomery said, for the status of the center and the Nashville ecosystem, “Stuart is a perfect next step.”
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