Rich Garcia applies Entrepreneur Skills for a Worthy Cause

by Rich Garcia June 10, 2015

Silicon Valley Latino Advisory Board Member Rich Garcia just completed riding his bicycle from San Francisco to Los Angeles, a total of 545 miles. This was part of the AIDS Lifecyle charity bike ride. An extraordinary accomplishment, we wanted to know what enabled him to be successful.

“It’s very much like entrepreneurship: taking risks, failing, iterating, and relying on your network to achieve something EPIC. I have never cycled seriously until I started training for this; it was a risk to take this on. If you don’t take risks, you remain where you are.” The concepts of “failure” and “iteration” were also key in successfully riding all 545 miles. “I religiously trained for 8 months. I experienced numerous falls, cramps, sprains, bruises, scrapes, discomfort, and energy lapses. Those “failures” and the iterations to correct them resulted in success.” Garcia admits that he learned these concepts while founding his startup company Blyve.com, a “Live Q&A Platform”. He adds, “what Blyve started as versus what we are now are two different things. We iterated efficiently on what we learned.” The result is revenue streams from some of today’s top brands including the Coca-Cola Company, Shell, and other large content producers. Rich raised over $3,000 in donations for the San Francisco AIDS Foundation so that he could ride. “Everybody wins. Awareness is raised, people in need are funded, and I get to do something very special. You can’t do EPIC alone.”