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If there is one thing entrepreneurs have in common, it’s that they are all willing to try. The entrepreneurial mind gravitates towards ideas, creativity, and a will to turn an idea into an enterprise. Andrew Duplessie has these qualities in spades. “It’s tough to summarize my journey as an entrepreneur. All I can say for sure is that I’ve embarrassed myself enough that I’m sort of numb to it. You have to be willing to put yourself out there. Release a product. Don’t hold it like a jewel. Take the tough feedback and use those beta points to develop something important.”
Duplessie might have had a few embarrassing entrepreneurial flops along the way, but mostly, he’s on a winning streak. Still in his 20s, Duplessie has dabbled in acting, appearing as a co-star on the wildly popular show American Horror Story, he founded Tipster, a popular app incubated through Stanford University’s StartX program aimed at connecting users to style experts in the fashion industry, he’s a writer of popular horror stories, and currently he is the Chief Innovation Officer at Flowcode, a company that enables users to instantly connect with the digital world by scanning a QR code. “After COVID-19 hit, everyone was scanning”, reflected Duplessie. “We were at the right place at the right time with a great product that could help people.” Duplessie sold his startup Tipster in 2019.
Duplessie has a lot churning in his entrepreneurial mind, but for him it’s perfectly natural. “I love watching. Sitting at a coffee shop and simply observing people has been instrumental in my journey. That’s when you get the best information as an entrepreneur.”
A lot of people observe Duplessie, too. He has nearly half-a-million followers on Instagram, and he uses his online rapport to get direct feedback and data around certain ideas percolating in his mind. “When I pitch an idea to an investor, I know in advance that I’ve got the feedback and data points. It’s really effective and cool” says the former Founder-In-Residence at Science Inc., a venture capital and private equity firm focused on solving everyday problems.
Duplessie graduated from Tulane University with a degree in finance and math. A few early post-graduation rejections in the world of banking set him on fire to go the startup route. Since then, he’s never looked back. “Thankfully”, he reflects, “those early fails enabled me to get to a creative place, which is where I am most myself.”
Andrew Duplessie has a lot going on. He’s just finished a new book, Flowcode is launching a big commercial campaign, and he’s ruminating on other ideas that can help people make more sense of their lives. Most recently appearing in an interview talking about the future of the metaverse.
For the outsider, it’s a rather dizzying pace, but for Duplessie’s supple entrepreneurial mind, it’s just daily life on an exciting journey. “Entrepreneurialism is like a muscle” he quipped, “you have to stretch, build, fail.”
For Duplessie, the mental workout is pure joy.
Follow his career on:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/andrewduplessie
Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@storiesbyandrew
Instagram: www.instagram.com/andrewduplessie
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