Daphne Nwobike, Staff Writer
On Feb. 20, the Babson Center invited Pat Morrell (C ’07) to serve as the Humphreys Entrepreneur-in-Residence. Serving as the Co-founder & Head of Strategic Growth at Aiwyn, Morrell is not a stranger to the world of entrepreneurship. Morrell was a political science major at Sewanee and still uses the skills he gained from this experience to thrive in the business world. The Babson Center invited Morrell to give a talk titled “How to Pre-Sell an Idea, and Other Entrepreneurial Best Practices,” where he shared insights into pitching ideas and flourishing in the high-stakes environment of entrepreneurship. While on campus, Morrell sat down with The Purple to share details about his career history and trajectory.
What was your Sewanee experience like? How did it prepare you for entrepreneurship?
“I was busier than I had any business being. I was a member of KA, involved in Sewanee’s Interfraternity Council, served on the orientation committee, was a member of the Red Ribbon Society, and was an assistant proctor at Benedict for a year. I did European studies and was in Oxford for a bit. In all, I made some phenomenal friends and learned how to learn. I ended up being a political science major and exited Sewanee, thinking I’d have a career in politics—and did that for a little bit. But the great thing about Sewanee is that I learned how to think and write, which has served me well as I’ve been an entrepreneur for the past 15 years.”
So why entrepreneurship?
“Desperation! So, after college, I moved to D.C. and did sales for a year. I had some friends involved in the Obama campaign and went to Ohio to work on the campaign with them. After the campaign, I returned to D.C. to work on the Hill. My answer to “Why entrepreneurship?” is desperation because I got to the point where I was living paycheck to paycheck waiting tables—I didn’t even have healthcare. Eventually, I got a call from a friend who was creating a startup. He offered me a position on his team, a salary, and healthcare. I was employee number three at the company called Three Ships. Being able to fill a blank whiteboard with an idea is so intellectually satisfying and fulfilling for me. It is obviously very risky, but there’s something about entrepreneurship where I like the freedom, autonomy, and risk it offers.”
When creating a start-up, how do you curate a team of individuals who work well together?
“Four years ago, before we started the company, we had a founder’s retreat to determine the kind of company we wanted to create and create values that aligned with those initiatives. One of our values is trust, and there’s a value statement about trusting good intentions. You can’t have a culture of feedback without being able to trust that the feedback is coming from a place of good intention.”
Why is writing so pivotal to your work, and what do you think about AI’s influence on writing?
“Writing is a phenomenal mechanism for distilling ideas. It forces focused thinking. Other skills, in general, come down to distillation and direct communication. Cogent communication is a superpower, and writing is the cleanest representation of this. As far as AI goes, people should learn to use ChatGPT. I will never holistically outsource my writing to ChatGPT because when you do that, you holistically outsource your thinking and erode your value to yourself and the marketplace. But it should be used to augment productivity. AI plus human equals collaborative superpower, but it should never be a crutch or reliance. The reality is that anybody can game any system, but anybody who’s earnestly sincere about being an entrepreneur has to have enough self-respect to not holistically outsource their own thinking.”
What accomplishments in your entrepreneurial journey are you the most proud of?
“Outwardly, like, accomplishment-wise, it’s objectively pretty cool that Aiwyn grew to the scale that it has and that we could raise the amount of capital that we have. It’s not a finish line but a challenge and an attestation of future potential. Our latest investors told us they did a big research undertaking and interviewed a significant portion of our customers. The feedback they got from our customers was the best feedback they’d ever gotten—which was very gratifying for me. Going all the way back, it was definitely very satisfying to help Barack Obama get elected. Finally, outside the professional realm, having a great family is my big North Star.”