Entrepreneur hopes to find more success

Ken Sanborn, the quintessential entrepreneur, is at it again.

The Longboat Key resident, featured in the Jan. 7 Business Review, is the lead executive behind a new TV and film production company on the Sarasota County side of Lakewood Ranch. The company, Sanborn Studios, made a splashy debut during a press conference held in downtown Sarasota Sept. 20.

Sanborn plans to produce independent films and TV shows from the studio, using mostly local employees. He already has at least one show lined up and recruited Hollywood executive and film producer Karinne Behr to move to Sarasota to help run the company.

Sanborn Studios isn't only a dream come true for Sanborn, who previously was a cameraman for WLFA-TV in Tampa and with ABC News's 20/20 program in New York City. Sanborn's father owned a cable TV station in Lakeland and Sanborn's son works in the TV production business, too.

The company also represents the latest example of a government opening taxpayer's wallets to lure a company to town. In this case, Sanborn Studios could receive up to $1.5 million in state and county incentives for job creation and retrofitting a facility. The company has committed to hiring 117 people with an average annual salary of $72,000 — nearly double the current average annual wage in Sarasota and Manatee counties.

But Sanborn, who found his largest entrepreneurial success in Gyrocam, a company that makes high-end cameras for military and law enforcement vehicles, won't only rely on government incentives to make Sanborn Studios go. Instead, he has promised to spend roughly $30 million on the TV studio project, which includes retrofitting a building in Lakewood Ranch to house two sound stages and a production office.

Sanborn built Gyrocam into a success despite going into an industry dominated by super-sized defense contractors.

In fact, by the spring of 2009, Gyrocam had been awarded more than $500 million in contracts from the Pentagon to build and deploy cameras in Afghanistan and Iraq. The success attracted a few suitors, and Lockheed Martin bought the company in July 2009.

Within months of that deal Sanborn was already restless. He turned down a few investment opportunities to instead focus on his next venture, which turned out to be Sanborn Studios.

“When the light goes off and I believe I can make a difference in something,” Sanborn told the Review, “I will do whatever it takes to be successful.”