People talk about entrepreneurs depending on luck. Tim saw Terry Loebel only that one time.

Their conversation was one of the factors leading Tim to decide to go full time with Vivid Sky and the SkyBOX. Was it luck on Tim’s part? Was there anything Tim was doing to improve his luck?

In the four years since missing St. Louis Cardinal Mark McGwire’s 70 th home run in St. Louis’ Busch Stadium in 1998, Tom Hayden had been toying with the idea of creating some sort of electronic device to let people attending a sports event enjoy the same sort of video and informational graphics that people who watch the game at home enjoyed. He even figured out the technology needed. He would use a PDA with Wi-Fi capabilities, “hardened” through its construction and tough case to be able to withstand liquids and the kind of rough handling you would expect among spectators at a sporting event. He would call it SkyBOX. In his spare time, he pursued the SkyBOX idea with sports managers, advertisers, computer people, and with everyone he met.
A tech-savvy marketing manager by trade, Tim knew what the user interface would look like. Having no budget for his part-time business, he had to talk friends into putting together a flash graphic of what his service would look like. (You can see the graphic on the Online Learning Center.) He had also thought about how he could make money with SkyBOX, and how he could get the major sports leagues to support SkyBOX.
Meanwhile, he continued his day job as the director of marketing and sales for a local advertising firm.
He knew to make SkyBOX work he would need to leave his employer, but he wasn’t sure how to decide. He was making good money and liked his work, but he was also likely to get moved from straight salary to more of a commission basis to help grow the business. He had a girlfriend. A lifelong St. Louisan, he had an active social life with his friends. He was close to his family, and they lived nearby.