Second Acts: An Upstate New York Renaissance
Babinec’s latest book.
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the Solo Book club
In an audacious second act, long-time Silicon Valley exec Martin Babinec returned to his tiny upstate New York hometown, determined to reimagine the region’s future.
There’s a lot of talk these days about the new arc of a career replacing the long-standing one of work until you retire, then golf until you drop.
Think of it as a “reset” that’s more purposeful than your prior career, doing something you’re good at, with people you trust and admire.
Martin Babinec
We call it a “Second Act” — something more and more experienced creatives and professionals tell us they want for themselves.
Entrepreneur Martin Babinec launched Trinet, a $4 billion cloud-based professional employer organization in 1988 to serve small- and mid-sized companies. He led Trinet as its CEO for 20 years, stepping aside in 2008 to join its board.
Recently, Babinec has been focused on his own, rather modest, Second Act: revitalizing the economy of upstate New York.
In his new venture he’s building out the infrastructure to support high-growth technology start-ups, leveraging the region’s world-class colleges and universities.
Martin joined us from the Mohawk Valley HQ in Little Falls, New York, population 4,946. More than 3000 miles from that “other” valley in California.
For more information about Babinec’s work in upstate New York, visit his website. go to babinec.com/about, which serves as a guide for those of you wanting to get involved in thoughtful, high-impact economic development.
Follow @MartinBabinec on Twitter, and check out the show notes (below).
Show Notes
Martin Babinec on LinkedIn
The Babinec File. Links to all six of the ventures that comprise Babinec’s Second Act.
The New Geography of Jobs by Enrico Moretti. This Berkeley economics prof’s research is the source of the claim that for every high-tech job created in an area five more non-tech jobs are created in that area.
More Good Jobs: An Entrepreneur’s Action Plan to Create Change in Your Community by Martin Babinec, is the most valuable handbook for creating local or regional economic change for entrepreneurs. Econ-dev pros might want to take a look at it as well.
Finish Big: How Great Entrepreneurs Exit Their Companies on Top, by Bo Burlingham. The author of the classic Small Giants in his most recent book explores what the founders with good exits did differently from the rest. Babinec makes the counterintuitive argument that just as planning for good exits begins when a venture is still young, thinking about a Second Act should start when Act I has barely begun.
Wisdom at Work: The Making of a Modern Elder, by Chip Conley, founder of the boutique hotel group Joie de Vivre. It’s the wisest, most thoughtful and honest work we’ve come across about how to think about finding meaning in your professional life when you’re not a kid any more.