01 · Who I am
I am Mark A. Kendell. I've been described as a purpose-driven serial founder of technologies and companies. What follows is a more defined description of who I really am and what I hope for in life.
Fifty plus years of creativity and innovation, one marriage, a family that keeps growing, and a logbook that is never quite as full as I would like.
My dad inspired me to start my first company... "Mark's Mowing Service" when I was 8 years old. Alot has changed since then; the sectors have changed — aviation, Jiffy Lube, cloud software, Artificial Intelligence, pharma, and currently I'm building an entertainment company that focuses on principle-based entertainment in video games and movies. I'm also building the world's first full continuum of care for mental health. I also invest alongside other creators of great ideas, not across the table from it, because I have sat in the operator's chair and know how lonely it gets.
My dad was an airline captain so along the way flying was a major love. I soloed at age 15 and passed my checkride for my license on the first day I was legally able to... age 17. Flying is also a great learning platform that gave me the language for building companies: the preflight, the flight plan, the instruments you trust when your senses lie. My view from the cockpit is not a metaphor I chose. It is the one that chose me.
What follows is my personal constitution and my purpose. I wrote them down because that is my personal flight plan of life. It's the basis for all my activities in life.
Personal constitution
Preamble — I, being of sound mind and limited time, set down the following so that on the days I forget who I am, I can read it back.
The day begins in prayer and scripture before it begins in email. When faith and convenience disagree, faith is the tiebreaker, and I will not pretend the disagreement did not happen.
No deal, no board, no flight is worth a missed dinner that could have been kept. I will be present in the room I am in, and my children will not have to compete with my phone for it.
Bad news does not improve with age. I will say the hard thing in the first meeting, not the fourth, and I will say it to the person it concerns before I say it about them.
I will read more than I post, ask before I assert, and change my mind in public when the evidence demands it. A belief that cannot survive a good question was not worth holding.
I invest in companies, not exits. If a business would not be worth running for twenty years, I have no business helping someone start it.
Impact is not a separate fund. It is a requirement I carry into every position — local jobs, honest care, and partnerships with people who can show their results.
Four quadrants — spirit, heart, mind, body — checked weekly. When one dips, I correct for it before it becomes an attitude I cannot recover from.
Purpose
To use whatever I have been given — faith, family, capital, time and a pilot's certificate — to help good people build things that last, and to be found in the right seat when I do.
I review it every January. It has changed in wording four times and in substance never.
Next
God, family and reason, followed by the four quadrants I use to check that none of them is being starved for the others.