Have the Confidence to Take the Risk

Reprinted from Traditions, Summer 2018
September 25, 2018

Cretin-Derham Hall Profile: Jason Hable '94

Silicon Valley and Midwestern Roots are Powerful Combination for Jason Hable '94

St. Paul native, Jason Hable ’94 spent some critical years of his early career in Silicon Valley, where technology and risktaking were a way of life.

“There is no stigma attached to failing in Silicon Valley,” explained Hable who worked with start-up tech companies in California for nearly 15 years.

Working in venture capital, Hable found himself partnering with entrepreneurs who were building the playbook on the fly. “These are new ideas, things that haven’t been done before, so you don’t really know how it will end up, but you can’t be afraid of losing.”

He is quick to point out that 90% of start-ups go out of business. “It can be a volatile road and young companies face a lot of uncertainty,” he reflects. “You have to be willing to endure the ups and downs.”

Highlights of his career include investing in, founding and serving as an executive of start-ups in the tech markets such as mobile apps and games, social media, and business-to-business software. He has been an executive at start-ups Metaplace, Playdom, and TuneIn and led product development at Disney Social Games after its acquisition of Playdom. He’s partnered with Apple, Google, Amazon, and many other groups that are not yet household names.

He likens start-ups to a triathlon, a hobby he has personally enjoyed over the years.

“Starting a company is a really grueling process. You sacrifice a lot and endure a lot of pain in hopes of finding success. It’s very similar to training — you grind out a lot of miles just trying to get a little better each day.”

Hable believes that what really matters to success is the willingness to be open-minded, determined and work hard. “Entrepreneurs need to be constantly learning and evolving,” he says. “And most importantly, you need to have enough confidence to override your fear of failure.”

Gaining Confidence on the Raider Football Field

Confidence is that ‘thing’ that is hard to teach, but Hable believes he learned a lot about it from his days at Cretin-Derham Hall as a football player. He tells the story of playing for coaches Mal Scanlan and Rich Kallok who, he believes, were successful at getting the most out of mediocre athletes like him. At first, he thought he had little chance of starting on the offensive line due to the caliber of competition that year, but he did.

“To my left was Matt Birk (future Super Bowl champion), and to my right was Brian Woessner, both were All-State athletes — they were much bigger and much better than me,” Hable laughs. “But my coaches believed in me and that I could contribute to our success and I was determined to prove them right.”

Hable has thought of this story many times as he has built teams and tried to position his employees for success. “We may all have questions (about our abilities) in our minds, but being able to ‘rise to the occasion’ is critical to success.”

He also learned another important lesson at CDH when he took Spectrum and believes it was an excellent foundation for him to learn how to think critically. “I had never really been challenged to look at problems through a multidisciplinary lens and that was a powerful exposure to the complexity of the world.”

Speaking as a father of two young boys, these are important lessons he hopes his sons learn no matter what their career and he acknowledges the impact that CDH had in these formative years. Not only did he have the support of people who challenged him in school and in sports, but he had a community that believed in him along the way.

Taking Midwestern Roots to Silicon Valley

Such a foundation served him well when he moved to Northern California after graduating from University of St. Thomas and earning his MBA from University of Minnesota Carlson School.

“When I arrived in Silicon Valley, I worried that everyone was smarter than me because they came from Ivy League schools or jobs on Wall Street,” Hable explained. “But I realized I could keep up with them because, frankly, pedigree does not determine success.” Rather, he discovered that success was determined by the very skills that he recalled from his Midwestern roots and those transformative days at CDH: confidence and hard work and the willingness to be open-minded.

Hable recently moved back to Minnesota with his wife and young family and is working with When I Work, Inc., a start-up provider of scheduling software for hourly workers. He also is a mentor at TechStars/Target Retail Accelerator, which is an incubator for early-stage companies from all over the globe which come to Minnesota for a 16-week, intense mentorship program to help launch their emerging business plan.

The Steve Jobs quote—"Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it...once you learn that, you'll never be the same again."—resonates with him because he realizes that he is motivated by the opportunity for new challenges and to be in a position to build things up with tangible results but it is not always easy.

 “It’s a lot like football…the more you have to overcome the more satisfying the results.”

This article and more are featured in the Summer 2018 issue of the CDH Magazine, Traditions.