> One of the most exciting times of being an entrepreneur is the very early days after having the idea. You discovered a pain point, created an awesome solution, and now you have a whole world of potential ahead of you.
Having an idea and building a solution is innovation, not entrepreneurship. "Entrepreneurs" are business people who take what someone else built and compete with other business people to sell it to the greatest market at the highest margins, then flog the business itself to some sucker just before it tanks. Someone who imagines and builds needs to be quite profound, whereas someone who takes and sells needs to be quite petty, so rarely do you find innovation and "entrepreneurship" in the same individual.
So I would say innovators are bad at finding their competition, which is the "entrepreneurs". Innovators often get a shock at how vicious "entrepreneurs" turn out to be when the product's almost ready. Even before there's a solution built, many "entrepreneurs" roam around looking for innovator victims who happily advertise what they're doing or even posting their software samples online. "Business is war" to the entrepreneur. Anyone in business who's building and trusting instead of stealing and fighting won't last long.
" Many of my friends are entrepreneurs. A few have mentioned this deep hollow conflicted feeling. Their business ideas are not things the world wants. They're following the current tech entrepreneur stereotype, building social apps and pursuing investors. They're hating it, and having to admit they're doing it only for the jackpot."
It seems like a lot of time and economic resources go towards creating things the world doesn't want. Some of this is just a part of competition and maybe people didn't think they wanted it until they saw it and tried it. There's some truth to it too though...short term gain is often more attractive than long term.
Articles cite qualities such as not being able to work for someone, being innovative, not being able to take instructions and not being able to digest feedback and criticism among others
I'm not sure which articles the author was reading, but if those are the qualities of entrepreneurs being listed, I wouldn't put much value on those articles at all. Digesting feedback and criticism, at least, are very important core traits of successful entrepreneurs and a key part of building the right thing. Not being abke to work for others and not being able to take instruction may be the reason many people look to entrepreneurship, but are hardly traits that make one successful. I'd argue that it likely makes it harder to be successful.
Being innovative is important, can't argue with that, but knowing when to be innovative and when not is something that often cones from feedback. Often innovation is actually a distraction.
Then again, the author says it's a list of "how to know you're an entrepreneur" and maybe a large number of entrepreneurs (especially the less successful ones) do indeed exhibit these traits.
"All that being said, I don't think being an entrepreneur actually has anything to do with being an expert. It's much more luck and hard work."
Isn't that kind of the unifying theme between the 10k hour domain expert and the innovative entrepreneur? That both require the ability to work and persevere through setbacks beyond what most people care to do in order to be successful?
"People like to believe that entrepreneurship is something totally different than executing a conventional career, but that's mostly a myth."
While we all eat shit at different tables there is no question in my mind that being an entrepreneur gives you greater flexibility and to be able to play less games that you do when you are an employee. (Or for that matter have partners).
I'm reminded of this when I do some side consulting and help people with what I am really good at. (Negotiating) I have to spend time convincing them of something that when I do the same for myself I have to convince nobody but myself. (And it's worked real well. For many years.) The amount of extra time I have to spend selling a concept (and writing emails) is a big drain.
Likewise I have a person who does some work for me on the side who holds a full time job with a big corporation doing security consulting. He does the work for me (on the side) because he enjoys the freedom he has to implement his ideas without having to convince his companies consulting clients (or his co workers) that his ideas are right. So he gets pretty much cart blanch with me to try something (and I write the check without all the red tape and effort).
> Many of my friends are entrepreneurs. A few have mentioned this deep hollow conflicted feeling. Their business ideas are not things the world wants. They're following the current tech entrepreneur stereotype, building social apps and pursuing investors. They're hating it, and having to admit they're doing it only for the jackpot. But if they stop, what's left?
I feel like this article is ignoring rich entrepreneurs who do use their wealth for far more interesting and/or useful things. First example that comes to mind: Elon Musk. Could he have made SpaceX or Tesla without first getting rich? Probably not. I think it's worthwhile to struggle to get rich, if you plan to use that monetary wealth to invest in more long-term plans.
I agree. And I believe the author does and just doesn't realize it.
"Those who are attracted to true entrepreneurship are figuring out new ways to work around the traditional investor class."
Seems to me if the investors had won, this wouldn't even be possible. But as long as innovation (in any industry, not only tech) exists, people will find a way to work around any obstacle.
I must be reading this differently than a lot of people. I don't think he's talking about actual business people. People with demonstrated experience, skill, and/or ability.
It sounds more like he's talking about the idea tourist. The guy who truly believes that the secret to start-up success is:
1. Have an idea.
2. . . .
3. Make money.
I think we can all agree that the idea tourist is annoying. If all you bring to the table is something as ephemeral as an idea, just keep walking. I've got no time for you.
Hmm...I have a feeling that his statement wasn't really directed at serial, game-changing entrepreneurs like Elon Musk (and himself, as you point out). But there are some people who start companies with the express intent of selling them and aren't necessary worried about them lasting for generations. Whether that makes them not true entrepreneurs, I don't know; I guess Steve Jobs would have said not. But I think they are a different breed than Musk et al.
> the outliers in successful entrepreneurship are the ones that project vulnerability/self-doubt,
Isn't it exactly the other way around? Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg have a reality distortion field. The outliers in entrepreneurship sell a new world that they are going to create. When Elon Musk started talking about electric cars and space travel to Mars 99% of the people thought he was batshit crazy.
The more I meet with entrepreneurs the less I think I can pick them. Sure, there are stereotypes: bright, aggressive, enthusiastic, young, etc. But there are many successful entrepreneurs that don’t come off this way.
The richest vein I have seen is two guys/gals who want to create a tool that they themselves want to use. This describes, for example, Google, Yahoo and Apple. I have come to believe that almost everyone has the entrepreneurial gene — it’s been necessary for survival for thousands of years.
> These were titans that saw an entire industry as it could be as opposed to the "entrepreneurs" we see now that stand on the shoulders of giants and still manage to only reach their navels.
Do you really believe that, or are you just being melancholic? Every age has their visionary genuis enterpreneurs en the small-scale incremental-evolution enterpreneurs. The "enterpreneurs we see now" include people like Jason Fried, Elon Musk and Daniel Ek. Yeah, and founders of the get-a-notification-when-someone-unfollows-me-on-Twitter-app businesses, but people like that were around in the eighties too - you just haven't heard of them.
Hm, disagree. Innovation is an essential element of entrepreneurship, just as persistence, boldness, business-acumen, if not the most essential one.
If you're not an innovator you also can't really be an "entrepreneur" since you won't be able to build new features for your product, nor scale your company.
What you're describing is more of an executive/corporate CEO that was hired into the company after a few years down the track I would say.
An example that comes to mind is Eric Schmidt. He's not an entrepreneur at all, he never invented something or created something new. However, he is a full-on CEO. He probably can scale up your company from $10,000 rev to $100M rev like no one else.
Imho entrepreneurs normally aren't good CEOs. They like to create new things, work on the product and usually don't want to bother talking with investors, hiring people or talking to the media.
The last sentence is kind of the key issue. If you're a good entrepreneur skilled at doing your job well, it's very hard to compete with a good crook skilled at doing his job well; and you have to worry about your actual product while he can focus on making the paper milestones.
>entrepreneurs have stopped chasing and solving Big Problems
What is strange to me is that people believe entrepreneurs ever solved "Big Problems". Who in history falls into this class? Thomas Edison? Alexander Graham Bell? Henry Ford? Guglielmo Marconi?
Nonsense, I say. These men didn't solve the "big problems" of their era -- they didn't attack issues that were popular in the public consciousness. They were really much more similar to today's SV entrepreneurs: they created markets, rather than entering them.
We never needed light-bulbs, and we never needed smartphones. We never needed the telephone, or Google. We never needed radio, and we didn't need Netscape either. We never needed cars, nor did we need Paypal, Bitcoin and Square.
The mistake is that thinking the first inventions are somehow more fundamental, just because they're older. That's nonsense.
Big Problems, to the extent that they are ever solved, are almost always solved collaboratively, by coalitions of scientists and engineers, involving both the public and private sector, and the solution rarely appears by flipping a switch. Norman Borlaug wasn't an entrepreneur and he didn't work alone. Ditto Edward Jenner, James Watt, you name 'em, we got 'em. These men were not entrepreneurs (though Watt worked with one).
>And yet, veterans who’ve returned from Afghanistan and Iraq have to wait roughly 270 days (up to 600 in New York and California) to receive the help — medical, moral, financial – which they urgently need, to which they are honorably entitled, after having fought our battles overseas.
>Technology, indeed, is solving the right problems.
Why on Earth would we expect technology to solve political problems?
>Meet the people who have the indignity of being over 50 and finding themselves suddenly jobless. These are the Untouchables of the new American workforce: 3+ decades of employment and experience have disqualified them from ever seeing a regular salary again. Once upon a time, some modicum of employer noblesse oblige would have ensured that loyal older workers be retained or at the very least retrained, MBA advice be damned. But, “A bas les vieux!” the fancy consultants cried, and out went those who were ‘no longer fresh.’ As Taylor Swift would put it, corporate America and the Boomer worker “are never ever getting back together.” Instead bring in the young, the childless, the tech-savvy here in America, and the underpaid and quasi-indentured abroad willing to work for slightly north of nothing in the kinds of conditions we abolished in the 19th century.
Economics: the only field you don't have to study to rant about on mit.edu.
>“What do we have to do with any of this? The unexotic underclass has to pull itself up by its own bootstraps! Let them learn to code and build their own startups! What we need are more ex-convicts turned entrepreneurs, single mothers turned programmers, veterans turned venture capitalists!
You don't have any numbers, you don't have any sources, you don't have any data. You think my only objection is that it's not my responsibility? My objection is that it's insane.
Khan Academy, though, looking at America's education system. Fitbit, targeting the number one cause of preventable death in the developed world. That e-cigarette guy from China, taking on number two. David Nichols and the psychedelic renaissance (not a company but it can't be), bringing MDMA to veterans. Theranos, making blood tests affordable for the 80% of Americans who make five figures or fewer. Prepolarizing MRI. Various on-demand laundry and cooking servies. It's out there. In some cases it doesn't matter: single mothers'[1] problem isn't that they aren't targeted by startups, it's that they don't have any money!
And you know what? It's fucking hard. These companies don't take off like bottle rockets the way Dropbox and Google did. Bringing products to disconnected people in disparate areas who don't like you is a lot harder than selling restaurant recommendations to the other nerds on the train.
[1]: you might be able to make an app so that single parents can find each other and trade-off childcare, but it probably exists already anyway. I'm not exactly Nostradamus, here.
I think a big part of the "problem" is that the skill set required to be an "innovator" in some field (coming up with an idea and making it work) is generally very different to that of being an "entrepreneur" (building a sucessful business around it).
It's quite rare to find the two in a single person and very often the best on one side are the worse on the other.
Makes perfect sense. IMO, a true entrepreneur devotes himself to an Idea he loves, an Idea he will want to spend the rest of his life with, working on. Thats the case with Bill Gates, Steve jobs and other successful entrepreneurs. Now if they say you don't need an idea to become an entrepreneur, then wtf will that guy work on? Come on, this is irony at its best.
Having an idea and building a solution is innovation, not entrepreneurship. "Entrepreneurs" are business people who take what someone else built and compete with other business people to sell it to the greatest market at the highest margins, then flog the business itself to some sucker just before it tanks. Someone who imagines and builds needs to be quite profound, whereas someone who takes and sells needs to be quite petty, so rarely do you find innovation and "entrepreneurship" in the same individual.
So I would say innovators are bad at finding their competition, which is the "entrepreneurs". Innovators often get a shock at how vicious "entrepreneurs" turn out to be when the product's almost ready. Even before there's a solution built, many "entrepreneurs" roam around looking for innovator victims who happily advertise what they're doing or even posting their software samples online. "Business is war" to the entrepreneur. Anyone in business who's building and trusting instead of stealing and fighting won't last long.
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