Are You An Entrepreneur or a Wantrepreneur?

http://www.infochachkie.com/are-you-an-entrepreneur/

by mollylynn • 18 years ago

52 42 18 years ago

To what extent do you share the list of entrepreneurial characteristics outlined in this post?

tptacek• 18 years ago

I normally really like this blog, but this post is puffy and superficial. You could replace "Entrepreneur" with "Eagle Scout" and, apart from TJ Watson, the post would still make sense.

mollylynn2• 18 years ago

Your point is well taken. Not every post on the site is a "How To", which I tend to like better as well.

Some are more inspirational. I do agree that this one has less 'meat' than some of the others, but I still like the description of the characteristics shared by many successful entrepreneurs.

Maybe there is a strong correlation between Eagle Scouts and Entrepreneurs?!

Thanks for the feedback.

tlrobinson3• 18 years ago

"Maybe there is a strong correlation between Eagle Scouts and Entrepreneurs?!"

For the record, I'm an Eagle Scout, one of my co-founders almost was, and one of my other few friends who is also starting a company is also an Eagle Scout. Anyone else out there?

azharcs• 18 years ago

A writer is someone who writes, not someone who goes about telling their friends that they are “a writer”. The same is true of entrepreneurs.

tlrobinson3• 18 years ago

The comments section is for your comments, not copy/pasting portions of the article verbatim without quoting...

tc7• 18 years ago

I wonder why it's necessary to write articles like this... Are there a lot of people out there who may have thought they were entrepeneurs, but needed to be convinced they're not via a list of traits they need to possess?

krschultz• 18 years ago

I bet a good percentage of the people reading entrepreneurial blogs have great ideas, but haven't actually leaped into the void. I'm in a startup, but its not MY startup, so I don't consider myself an entrepreneur .. yet.

fallentimes5• 18 years ago

That's a lot better than being a bitter cuber/red taper who criticizes everyone's startup while not having their own. I believe many of them hang out on Techcrunch.

jamesbritt• 18 years ago

It's like a late-night TV ad.

"You may be an entrepreneur and not even know it!"

Alex3917• 18 years ago

Interview Question Exercise

Draft five interview questions that you would ask someone in order to determine if they are an entrepreneur

1) What's the most interesting idea you've had or thing you've thought about in the last week?

2) If you had to write The Great American Novel, what five themes would you consider essential to touch upon?

3) What books have influenced you the most? Who are your favorite bloggers?

4) What's an example of a time you've hacked some non-computer system to your advantage? (paraphrased from the YC app.)

5) What's an example of something you've made that people have wanted.

mollylynn2• 18 years ago

These are Great questions.

I especially like the "Great American Novel" question. If answered thoughtfully, it would provide a nice window into the soul of the interviewee.

The "favorite blogger" question is good as well, as it also helps the interviewer understand what motivates and excites the interviewee.

Brushfire3• 18 years ago

Sure these are good for young entrepreneurs. Of course, I know dozens of people who are totally entrepreneurs but dont spend any time reading blogs, ever.

henning• 18 years ago

Does this mean if I want to be my own boss that I can't just work on something for 5 minutes and then spend the rest of the day on Twitter and playing video games?

dgordon2• 18 years ago

Unfortunately not. What kind of boss lets their employees do that? :-P

fallentimes5• 18 years ago

Is the person who coined the term Wantrepreneur the same person who coined the term Web 2.0? Did Godin have something to do with this?

You're not an entrepreneur unless you own/owned a company (the rest of the details are very debatable). I hate sales jobs that describe themselves as "entrepreneurial" in nature. You're still taking orders from someone else.

rokhayakebe• 18 years ago

I respectfully disagree.

An entrepreneur is anyone who can see an opportunity or an idea and turn it into hard cash. If you can do it through someone else's business then even better. You are simply reducing the calculated risk.

A few years ago several bartenders and waitresses went out and bought investments properties because another bartender had done it and made lot of money. They had a few properties, incorporated their business and rolled over the taxes, and got loans easily. That did not make them entrepreneurs. Those business owners helped to drive house prices all the way up, then all the way down taking the economy with them along the way.

On the other hand, take Google. A great search engine, a good amount of visitors who love the product. But someone outside the founders came up with Adwords and executed it pretty well. That s an entrepreneur.

fallentimes5• 18 years ago

It's funny, one of the original details I left out and put "debatable" for instead was "profitability".

IMHO I still don't think the Adwords guy is an entrepreneur; he's an employee - a damn good employee.

thomasmallen3• 18 years ago

> An entrepreneur is anyone who can see an opportunity or an idea and turn it into hard cash. If you can do it through someone else's business then even better. You are simply reducing the calculated risk.

No, that's called a profiteer.

yummyfajitas• 18 years ago

Speculators are transmitting information about future prices to the present, which is a useful thing to do.

For instance, after Katrina and various other oil shocks, speculators sent oil prices up in anticipation of shortages. This sent consumers the message: "please use less oil right now."

Usually, this is a good thing, though collective insanity ("house prices never go down!" or "it's a new economy, earnings don't matter!") can cause problems.

dshah• 18 years ago

I like the term "Wannabepreneur" better. It better captures the essence of the issue at hand.

callmeed• 18 years ago

"They often have a naive view of the future - not Pollyannaish, but one in which failure is just not a potential outcome ... Entrepreneurs have the audacity to believe that the odds do not apply to them, because they know they are going to win."

This sort of hubris has always bothered me about some entrepreneurial types. I understand "looking past limitations", "going against the odds", and "taking risks". But, I think: a) There are outside forces which you cannot control and which can drastically affect your business (even to the point of failure). To ignore them is foolish, IMO. b) I think failure is a key part of being an entrepreneur. It's how you learn and grow. Failure happens sometimes.

Also, I wish his points on humility were a little more thorough (and included points on failure). I'm not sure W. Churchhill and John Lennon even qualify as entrepreneurs.

13ren5• 18 years ago

"success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm"

But focusing on the possibility of failure doesn't work as well. One must be fearless, and fail fearlessly; then fail again and again.

You get more information from failure than trying to anticipate failure.

lethain• 18 years ago

This article buys into the idea that entrepreneurship is hard, and most people can't do it. Beyond being an exercise in self-love, this is the perspective that the 'big dumb companies' crave. Whether we say "damn, I'm not good enough to leave" or we say "damn, I'm one of the few that is good enough to get out", we're still buying into the vision that industrialists wrought for us a century ago.

Pre-industrialism, essentially everyone was self-employed (if we want a specific example, lets take the USA 150 years ago, rather than regressing into feudalism or Egyptian slaves); despite the posited inability of non-elites to be entrepreneurs. The barriers to entrepreneurship are not inherent flaws in the majority of humanity, but intentionally manufactured barriers to promote the industrial model of production and consumption.

Whenever you're cribbing euphemisms off of eight year old 50 Cents' songs, then you're probably driving the wrong way down a one way street.

dgordon2• 18 years ago

"Pre-industrialism, essentially everyone was self-employed (if we want a specific example, lets take the USA 150 years ago, rather than regressing into feudalism or Egyptian slaves); despite the posited inability of non-elites to be entrepreneurs."

Exactly. The same is apparently (according to John Taylor Gatto, writing in The Underground History of American Education) true of the Amish today. Are the Amish just that gifted with genes for entrepreneurialism? I think not. It's merely conventional, and a recent convention at that, to work for a Faceless Big Company by default, as pg points out in his essay "You Weren't Meant to Have a Boss."

thomasmallen3• 18 years ago

> Whenever you're cribbing euphemisms off of eight year old 50 Cents' songs, then you're probably driving the wrong way down a one way street.

I understand what you're saying, but that's the wrong way to say it. I've learned more about entrepreneurship from hustlers I've known than anyone else, and hip hop usually captures that spirit better than any other music. Entrepreneurship takes balls, and your stones have to be massive to flip dimes and quarters under the noses of teachers and cops.

fallentimes5• 18 years ago

You're right. Few things are as entrepreneurial as drug dealing or even ticket scalping :).

Brushfire3• 18 years ago

I don't know about anyone else, but self-applying the word entrepreneur gets really old, really fast. I've done it myself out of necessity (and brevity), but it still feels wrong.

unalone• 18 years ago

When would you ever have a chance to say something like that? "Hi, my name is Bob, and I'm an entrepreneur?" It seems so silly.

When people ask me what I like to do, I say "Make things." It's quicker, easier to comprehend, and lends itself to what usually gets called entrepreneurship.

Brushfire3• 18 years ago

Resumes, Social networks, lots of places. Its not good, but it is fast. Trying to explain to people my career path takes more than 20 seconds.

'Make things' is good, but it isnt specific enough for most people. They would say "What do you make?" thinking some sort of art/craft/machinery.

Dont get me wrong, I still like 'Make Things' better than entrepreneur, but they are both pretty bad. I usually end up telling people I'm self employed and that I do lots of things and am currently between projects.

13ren5• 18 years ago

The differentiation between inventor and entrepreneur is helpful for me. It's not about technology, but usefulness. Not one brilliant perfect insight, but iteration. Not money, but creation.

most entrepreneurs iterate on preexisting ideas to the point that the inventions represent marketable value propositions upon which sustainable companies can be created.

...obsession is the father of innovation. Innovations are often sussed out by entrepreneurs who cannot let go of an idea ... compelled to succeed by creating something from nothing, not by the lust for money, power or fame.

He didn't say this, but the thing about "marketable value propositions" is they are about problems or needs. It's frightfully easy to invent a "solution" without a problem.

Joel said "Where there's MUCK, there's brass". He meant unpleasant work is rewarded. But I interpret it as: for a solution to really make a difference to people, it has to be a solution to a problem/need they have. The worse the problem (i.e. the more ugly, confusing, complex, frustrating, painful, horrible and MUCKY it is), the more worthwhile the solution. No problem means no solution - by (my) definition. A "solution" without a problem isn't worth anything. Therefore, MUCK is a pre-condition of a worthwhile solution: where's there's muck, there's brass.

Arguably, inventors (of products) create solutions; entrepreneurs (marketers of products) connect solutions to problems. Most powerful when combined e.g. Wozniak + Jobs, or unified in one person: Edison.

skmurphy• 18 years ago

This is a horoscope: Sincerity, Humility, Honesty, Naivety, Impatience, Optimism, Influencer.

Sincerity, Honesty, Optimism would be pre-requisites for any legitimate profession (perhaps internal auditors need to be pessimists).

Naivety if it means ignorance is dangerous: you can ask fundamental questions but that's different from being naive. He doesn't give the full quote from Orville Wright on audacity, it continues "Yet faith in our calculations and the design of the first machine, based upon our tables of air pressures, secured by months of careful laboratory work, and confidence in our system of control developed by three years of actual experiences in balancing gliders in the air had convinced us that the machine was capable of lifting and maintaining itself in the air, and that, with a little practice, it could be safely flown."

They clearly contemplated failure in selecting a location for test flights with strong headwinds that didn't force them to build up a lot of ground speed to take off (making landings safer).

"We realized the difficulties of flying in so high a wind, but estimated that the added dangers in flight would be partly compensated for by the slower speed in landing." Orville Wright in "How We Made the First Flight" http://ntl.bts.gov/lib/6000/6100/6126/flight.pdf

thomasmallen3• 18 years ago

It's scary how many of the items on that list match me as a kid (except for lame stuff like yard sales. I found better ways to turn a buck).

steveplace• 18 years ago

Another blog post dealing in platitudes and absolutes.

Don't really care if I fit into your mold of an entrepreneur.

Are You An Entrepreneur or a Wantrepreneur?

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