In the midst of his senior year at the University, Kenny Nguyen, founder and CEO of Big Fish Presentations, withdrew himself from school on Wednesday to focus all of his energy on his fast-growing college start-up.
“I’m trying to gather myself right now because I’m about to shift my life to full-time this, and I think it’s going to drive our company up a lot,” Nguyen said. “I’m not going to be a student anymore, but I had a lot of good experiences at LSU that helped me out.”
Big Fish, which has been featured in Forbes magazine and named Inc. magazine’s “coolest college start-up,” is a presentation strategy company that serves three purposes: presentation design, presentation consulting and commercial video production, but its tagline is “to sell experiences.”
“The idea came after watching a horrible Fortune 500 executive present at a student organization meeting,” Nguyen said. “I thought to myself, ‘If the world’s largest companies are presenting like this, chances are the biggest new ideas aren’t going to be heard because everyone’s falling asleep.’”
Nguyen and his four-man team at the time started Big Fish in February 2011 and ended their first year with $58,000 in revenue. The company’s current 2012 revenue is $150,000, but Nguyen has slated that number to reach $250,000 by the end of the year.
The jump from $58,000 to $150,000 in revenue this year is something that Nguyen said everyone at Big Fish is “very proud of,” but it took “a lot of hustling.”
But Big Fish isn’t only growing financially. The business moved from its first office above AT&T at the corner of Acadian Thruway and Perkins Road to a new location, designed on a $1,500 budget, above Sweet Wishes cupcake shop on Perkins in July. The company has grown from five employees to 11, including one intern.
“We moved in here because the company was growing so fast,” Nguyen said.
He explained that the previous workspace was divided into multiple rooms, but the new office has a more open floor space, making it ideal for everyone to bounce around ideas and collaborate on projects.
Nguyen said Big Fish Presentations is in high demand around Baton Rouge and nationally, having attracted clients such as Raising Cane’s, L’Auberge Baton Rouge Casino and Hotel, Blue Cross and Blue Shield, Celtic Media Studios and Fortune 500 companies Mutual of Omaha and Entergy.
Nguyen attributes the company’s growth to its employees — the “best young talent” around. They execute his ideas and follow his vision for the business, he said. Power-players like Google have grown so large because they followed a strategy of hiring the best people, Nguyen said.
“If you [the company’s leader] are the smartest person in the room, there’s a problem,” Nguyen said. “I give 100 percent credit to them. It’s never all about me. It’s definitely about the people here. We work together as a team. We win, lose together.”
Before departing as a student, Nguyen traveled to Detroit in September to attend his second Global Student Entrepreneur Awards, representing the Central region of the United States
Nguyen placed as runner-up, losing to a salad company named The Green Bean. Although he didn’t clench the first-place prize, the experience was still worthwhile, he said.
“I encourage any student entrepreneur to do it,” he said. “You will not learn if you don’t put yourself out there. You’ve gotta take risks.”
The young entrepreneur has high ambitions for his company in the coming years. He said Big Fish is currently focusing on event partnerships, which means it designs presentations for companies at events.
But Nguyen said he also wants the company to start hosting its own events, similar to TED talks. He is the media chairman for a TEDx event, which will focus on the evolution of LSU as an innovative and creative force in Louisiana. The event is being held at the University in March. Big Fish may be in charge of the event’s video production, he said.
And still in the brainstorming stage is a book that Nguyen wants to write. He said it will be about presentations, how to give them on slide shows and what constitutes an experience, referring to the company’s tagline.
And then there’s the most ambitious goal of all.
“I want this company to be the world’s standard of presentations,” Nguyen said. “I want to be the go-to people. When you want that next big sale, you go to us.”
