Entrepreneurship is not about changing the world

http://smartbabesaresexy.blogspot.com/2009/01/enough-about-passion-and-changing-world.html

by urlwolf • 17 years ago

47 40 17 years ago

smartbabesaresexy.blogspot.com

daleharvey2• 17 years ago

Passion isnt part of the definition of entrepreneur, but I do think its a facet that precedes it.

just like becoming a professional swimmer, being the best (swimmer) and not failing (starting a company) both require extremely hard work, and its hard to sustain that level of work required without some(a lot of) passion

pg• 17 years ago

Exactly. People will work harder to do something that improves the world as well as making money. If we were just trying to make money, we probably wouldn't have started YC, for example. We hope to make money, but that alone wouldn't have provided sufficient activation energy.

paul7986• 17 years ago

This post irks me!

What does the author consider Thomas Edison's work? Did Edison innovate early for the sole purpose of making money? I think rather he did because of passion, interest and possibly the thought of changing the world. Obviously he succeeded in the above and in turn created industries that fed and feeds millions of people each year.

I can't imagine starting up a business where I had no passion and interest in doing, rather only for the money. Ummm i had that type of situation before and it was called a job!

moe• 17 years ago

I'm not sure about that. Changing the world is actually very low on my priority list and I'd say most of the other founders I know think likewise.

It's not that I wouldn't love to change the world - I just don't find that a realistic goal to set. My immediate goal is much lower and more egoistic: I need to create something that rakes in enough money to sustain itself and cover my basic living expenses.

Only then will I have the time and mental freedom to pursue one of my world-changing ideas.

The problem with the world-changing ideas is that most of them are so inherently binary. Who can really afford to dedicate themselves at least 6-12 months to an all-or-nothing experiment?

For me the most important attribute of a business model is not the revolution-potential but rather the scalability. I'm going for things that have a chance to pay my bills even when they're only a small success. Call me a coward but I need a leg to stand on before I'll dare to reach for the stars, so to say...

dtap• 17 years ago

This strikes me as very close minded. The measure of success depends on the metric. How innovative I am does not always manifest itself in money. Does that make my endeavor any less entrepreneurial? I think not.

If all you care about it money, than obviously not having it will mean you have failed. If you define your entrepreneurial spirit as something more, you are successful when you achieve that something, whatever it may be.

waleedka• 17 years ago

Are you, maybe, stretching the definition of entrepreneur too much? If you're building something innovative, but not a business, then you might be a pioneer, a visionary, or a leader. It's not about the money. You can get rich in any one of different ways without being an entrepreneur.

Now, if you're an entrepreneur and a visionary who changes the world, you get double karma.

newt0311• 17 years ago

Classically, the definition of entrepreneurs has been the former. People who set out to make companies and get rich. Just try google: define:entrepreneur.

When we use a language, we should respect its definitions or pretty soon people start saying something and meaning something entirely else. Maybe instead of entrepreneur, we need another word like doer...

daleharvey2• 17 years ago

founder?

tigerthink• 17 years ago

Cross-posted from the blog's comments...

OK, let's say I want to change the world and I decide starting a company is the best way to do that. I guess that means I'm not an entrepreneur, huh?

"But the sooner an entrepreneur and young budding CEOs realise that there really is only one metric that counts in this game, the sooner we will get beyond the recent Web 2.0 silliness and thereby give birth to a revitalised start up environment where some truly amazing, long lasting companies will be created."

To the contrary, the Web 2.0 silliness is a result of people thinking like you. Most Web 2.0 companies (reddit, twitter, youtube) are time-wasters. If entrepreneurs were looking to change the world, they'd be working on something real like online education.

trevelyan• 17 years ago

My business involves education and development. The nice thing about game changing technologies and fast growing industries is that you can have your cake and eat too.

hollerith2• 17 years ago

The parent of this comment calls Reddit a time-wasters and contrasts it with online education.

Probably the most valuable online education available today for a sufficiently smart person wanting to become a scientific generalist is provided by Eliezer Yudkowsky. (Since 2001 I for example have learned more science from Eliezer's online writings than from all other sources combined.) The software for Eliezer's latest project, Less Wrong, is . . . Reddit.

(Clarification on what I mean by "education": Eliezer provides education, not credentialing.)

nostrademons2• 17 years ago

Honestly, I don't think Eliezer Yudkowsky's writings at all compare with what you can get by seriously working through the MIT OpenCourseware site and/or buying textbooks off Amazon.com and working through all the problems in them. Don't confuse feeling smart with being smart.

kailashbadu• 17 years ago

If you force a `definition` of a term to explain every possible characteristic, nuances, and exceptions of the term, you are unlikely to come up with something meaningful and useful. When you make a statement in everyday conversations, it is generally assumed that the reader will be able to both extrapolate the definition to the meaning that is not originally covered by the definition. Likewise it is also assumed that the reader will also be able to intuitively exclude the exceptions.

When someone says It’s a crime to cut up people, it certainly doesn’t mean he holds the surgeons culpable.

Entrepreneur, in it’s most generally understood meaning, is about starting a business that actually makes money. The definition is specially relevant in the world of technology because it’s abound with businesses that created ‘cool’ products (because they were passionate about it) but failed to monetize it.

Now does that make 'social entrepreneur' a misnomer? Certainly not.

inglorian• 17 years ago

>>To the contrary, the Web 2.0 silliness is a result of people thinking like you. Most Web 2.0 companies (reddit, twitter, youtube) are time-wasters.

Perhaps she has a point -- Twitter and Youtube are not making money. By her definition, they fail as entrepreneurs. I don't know about Reddit.

bjelkeman-again• 17 years ago

Old fashioned thinking. Only money counts. I disagree.

alain94040• 17 years ago

To me, entrepreneur meant trying something new. By the way, it's a French word, so I should be qualified to comment on its meaning beyond what your thesaurus says :-)

So I agree with your disagreement.

savantids3• 17 years ago

The french origins come from the words for undertake and business (entreprise). Yes, so it means to star a business.

msie2• 17 years ago

"truly amazing" - a little bit of hyperbole perhaps? Oh boy, I can't wait for the Golden Era of Entrepreneurship to arrive!!!

ph0rque• 17 years ago

> An entrepreneur's job is to build lasting companies that make lots of money. Period.

This is one of those arguments that starts falling apart as soon as you start looking at it closely. What if I build a company that makes lots of money for a short period of time? Am I not an entrepreneur? Or what if I don't respect laws and ethics while making said money, and I'm smart enough to not get caught, or smart enough to quit when I have a reasonable value of "lots of money"?

nostrademons2• 17 years ago

I think it's better to phrase this in terms of instrumental vs. inherent goals. The inherent goal of an entrepreneur is to build lasting companies that generate large profits. That's what they're there for, and that's the yardstick for success.

Some instrumental goals of this are being passionate about the product, changing the world, doing what you love, etc. Because if you do what you love, you're likely passionate about the product. If you're passionate about the product, you'll likely change the world. If you change the world, you'll likely (though not always) have a built a lasting company that generates large profits.

Similarly, for most people, generating large profits is an instrumental goal to being happy, and then being happy is the inherent goal. Some people find they can be happy by doing a not-so-profitable small business that happens to let them do what they want, skipping the make-lots-of-profits step. These people fail at entrepreneurship but win at life.

sarvesh• 17 years ago

How can one create a long lasting company if that person isn't passionate about what he is creating? How long one work on something he doesn't love? I think his statements are contradicting or at least nearly impossible to achieve.

theBobMcCormick2• 17 years ago

What a stupid and pointless blog post. His argument is completely unfounded. For example; in the comments, someone asks where Jimbo Wales would be considered an entrepreneur and the author of the blog says that Jimbo Wales is not an entrepreneur, because WikiPedia is not a for profit business.

This a rather arbitrary definition of an entrepreneur. I checked both Dictionary.com and Merriam-Webster.com, and both of their definitions for entrepreneur do include room for entrepreneur who found non-profits. See for yourself: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/entrepreneur http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/entrepreneur

Clearly the authors argument and conclusion is unfounded crap. Creating a long lasting and profitable commercial business is certainly a valid motivation for entrepreneurship, but so is changing the world, or even something as modest as looking to establish a second income stream, or looking for a different time/income tradeoff (4HWW, etc).

123nohack• 17 years ago

Jimbo has tried many times to start businesses to make money, and he has failed in all of them.

It is one thing to start a nonprofit foundation and have people donated their time to building it.

It is a completely different thing to own a P&L, have to pay suppliers, pay employees, get customers, pay taxes, and still make money.

Jimbo is many things, but he is NOT a successful entrepreneur. Wikia anyone?

theBobMcCormick2• 17 years ago

Look up the definition of an enterprise in your dictionary. A non-profit like Wikipedia is an enterprise. Therefore, Jimbo is a successful entrepreneur.

msie2• 17 years ago

Some examples of entrepreneurs who are truly amazing and long-lasting:

- patent trolls

- domain squatters

- spammers

savantids3• 17 years ago

I don't think the blogger is referring to unethical business practices any more than the blogger would endorse organised crime and steroids in sports. He is referring to people like Steve Jobs and Sergey Brin and Bill Gates .. not Bernie Madoff or Jeff Skilling.

FraaJad• 17 years ago

Its a she.

edw519• 17 years ago

Uh, "Bill Gates" = "unethical business practices".

Where have you been?

10ren2• 17 years ago

entrepreneur: n one who organizes, manages, and assumes the risks of a business or enterprise. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/entrepreneur

"Enterprise" makes it pretty broad, from Broadway musicals to journeys of discovery. There's nothing about "lasting companies" that make "lots" of money.

The article is really suggesting that entrepreneur should be defined as it has defined it. Unfortunately, it presents no arguments for this, but merely proclaims an opinion.

10ren2• 17 years ago

Even for the pure capitalist, there are well documented benefits to having a non-momentary cause or purpose [1]. Your workers work better; your community supports you; your customers favour you. It's good PR, and every lasting company that makes lots of money does PR.

But apart from the ideal capitalist (who doesn't exist, sorry), the human species has an instinct for cooperation and for belonging (not always requited). It's not intellectual or calculated, it's just part and parcel of the animal that is homo sapiens, as much as being bipedal. It's why sacrifice is at the centre of popular films (e.g. Titanic), and why members choose to hang out with each other, and to devote themselves to something. I surmise that the reason why humans evolved this instinct is because cooperation and unity are very effective at promoting survival and growth - which today is largely handled through a business or enterprise.

[1] for example, see Built to Last and Good to Great

ctingom• 17 years ago

Entrepreneurship is about changing one little small part of my world.

Smartbabes• 17 years ago

Hello everyone!

Thanks so much for your comments both here and on the original blog. I will try to reply to a few points raised here which I think misunderstand my argument.

1. "This thinking caused the economic crisis" ... I am having a hard time following the logic here. Bill Gates, Sergey Brin, Steve Jobs ... how did they cause this economic crisis again? I believe the poster is conflating my argument with a view I never made, which is that people should focus on short term versus long term. I never stated this, and no one would claim that a person who only tries to maximize the profits for one day to the detriment of the company for ever would be a successful entrepreneur.

2. As for the bankers in this world, according to my view, they would be complete failures ... as they LOST money by the bucket loads.

3. As for the question of starting a company to change the world, I applaud you. You may be very successful in helping many people. But this would not put you in the same league as Bill Gates, Sergey Brin or Steve Jobs UNLESS your company can consistently make money.

To make my point perhaps a bit clearer, take for example another profession ... brain surgeon. You can be the nicest brain surgeon in the world. You can set up a company that offers free books to children. But if my father needs brain surgery, all of these are side considerations. What matters is whether you can perform the brain surgery successfully or not. That is it.

The same point applies to competitive athletes. They can be fine people, but if they come in 8th in a footrace, they have not succeeded in their job, which is to run faster than their competitors.

4. As for the point about twitter and other non-moneymaking companies, that is exactly my point ... they need to find viable business models. Linkedin is a company that makes money and one I consider to be an entrepreneurial success ... twitter, no (at least not yet).

5. As for Vincent Cerf and Tim Berners-Lee, they are all successful scientists. They are NOT successful entrepreneurs, unless you stretch the definition of entrepreneur to a point where the term becomes meaningless. (e.g. "My mom is an entrepreneur because she gave me the wonderful gift of life," etc.)

If you change the definition of a word, you can prove any nonsense. For example I can prove that camels have wings and can fly ... just by stretching the definition of camel to also include all animals with two eyes. This is a logical fallacy.

So in sum, you can respect people like Jimmy Wales or Tim Berners Lee or Linus Torvalds or my mother. I certainly do. But they have not won the entrepreneur game. Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Sergey Brin ... Yes. My mom ... no.

Love,

Anjali Sen http://smartbabesaresexy.blogspot.com

alranissteve• 17 years ago

How true.

I am in music school studying viola, and these comments really hit home.

Not everyone can be successful, not everyone can be above average, and these attempts to stretch the definition seem to me to be a way of just making people feel better when they are not successful.

If being an entrepreneur is all about passion, GREAT, I can be a successfull entreprenuer, and so can everyone else! Wow!

But this is nonsense. In any human endeavor, not everyone can win. Not everyone can be Yo Yo Ma, even though it may make you feel good and touchy feely to say that you can.

c00p3r• 17 years ago

this sporty hot-shot, who jumps on the roof every day / he knows how it works / but entirely missed the point. =)

iamelgringo• 17 years ago

It's a lot easier to hire passionate engineers as employees if you're trying to change the world, however.

Entrepreneurship is not about changing the world

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