Imagine that you want to open a start-up, but you are in dire need of money, so, what’s the quickest way to get funds? Bank seems feasible or maybe a venture capitalist? For David Daneshgar it was neither.

When David Daneshgar with his partners Farbod Shoraka & Gregg Weisstein were building a new website for their new business idea, BloomNation- a marketplace for a local florist, they desperately needed some funds. So, what did they do?

They asked David to hit the poker table.

I know this sounds absurd, but it is the truth. Daneshgar was good at poker and his partners knew it. So, David went to a two-day poker tournament and won 30 Grands with ease. He immediately invested the money into the company, which officially launched in 2011.

Today, the company has landed $1.7 million in funding and has grown inexplicably. It has an extensive consumer market and fosters about 3,500 florists delivering to nearly 5,000 cities across the country.

Born on June 18, 1981, in California, the success story of the 40-year-old is no less than a miracle. So, let’s learn about some of the critical life lessons adopted by David Daneshgar to succeed in life:

Positioning is crucial:

Daneshgar was great at the poker game. So, naturally, he wanted to teach a class about poker when he was at Berkeley. Although students were allowed to conduct such classes with approval from the administration, his class wasn’t approved. So, what did Daneshgar do?

In true entrepreneurial fashion, David cleverly renamed the class “The Statistics and Probability of Gaming’. This is why positioning is so important when it comes to business; you need to make your product and services palatable to the consumers.

Focus on the end goal:

Daneshgar’s passion for poker started when he became a teacher. He believed that if he wanted to teach some of the smartest students in the country, he would have to be the absolute best in the game. So, he devoted his time and patience to the cause.

He hunted for every VHS and DVD video he could find on the subject and practiced poker tactics day and night. In the end, his hard work paid off. Daneshgar managed to bag several million dollars in earnings as a pro poker player in the years to come.

Take risks and increase the stakes:

Daneshgar belonged to a strict Persian-Jewish family. He was afraid that his parents wouldn’t like it when they found out that their son was gambling. The night he won his first poker tournament, he came home petrified of their reaction. But his fear didn’t materialize. His mother calmly asked, “David, would you be able to do that again?”

That was all the encouragement Daneshgar needed to continue his poker career. Fast forward to several decades, Daneshgar has managed to create a self-sustaining empire thanks to his passion for taking risks.

Conclusion:

When you Google the definition of entrepreneur, you will come across the answer- a businessman who takes risks. We have covered several stories of budding entrepreneurs but none as unique as Daneshgar.

On the day of the final match, everyone thought that the sprouting entrepreneur would bite the dust.

Even his co-founders had packed up their laptops thinking that Daneshgar won’t make it. But he looked up with a sly smile and commented, “It’s flower time”. I think THAT is the perfect definition of an entrepreneur- concludes Business development expert Hirav Shah.

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