So, You Want to Be an Entrepreneur

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123498006564714189.html

by prakash • 17 years ago

22 18 17 years ago

online.wsj.com

swombat3• 17 years ago

All very good points, but I can't help feeling that anyone sensible who uses this list as a guide to whether to start up will never ever start a start-up.

It's a scary world out here, and you need a little bit of ignorance (or a lot of arrogance) to get started. I chose the latter option, but not everyone is as arrogant as me ;-)

tptacek5• 17 years ago

Which one of the items in this list seem overblown to you? They all seem pretty solid to me. If this list scares you away from entrepreneurship, maybe it's doing you a favor.

swombat3• 17 years ago

They're all real, but it's easy to over-estimate them if you're an intelligent, reasonable, risk-averse individual (like most successful entrepreneurs).

Most of those are not "killer" issues, either, like the article presents them. They're just problems you'll encounter and deal with along the way. Being aware of them is worthwhile, but with the caveat that you don't need to resolve all that stuff immediately.

I mean, take the last few for example:

9. Are you a self-starter?

8. Do you have a concept you're passionate about?

7. How persuasive and well-spoken are you?

6. What's your track record of executing your ideas?

5. Are you comfortable making decisions on the fly with no playbook?

Sure, all those things help with running a business... but do you need to put ticks in all those boxes to start a business? Do you need to be confident in making decisions by the seat of your pants, have a track record of executing ideas, be a persuasive, well-spoken, passionate, self-starter before you even get started? Absolutely not. All that stuff will come with time.

davidw5• 17 years ago

"Sort of". I love to build stuff, and want to be independent. Not sure what other options there are, really.

tptacek5• 17 years ago

Freelancing.

davidw5• 17 years ago

Long term? Not really... it's treading water. With either a product company, or a stable, steady job, you still make money when you go on vacation. Not so with freelancing. Unless you are doing genuine 'consulting', where you come in, give some advice, and get paid a crapload for it, freelancing doesn't really seem to be a path to anywhere. Generally, you have to be well recognized to get the really plum jobs, though... which is why you don't see many actual 'freelancers' who are older.

To tell the truth, one of the things that most inspires me about "the PG story" is that, at least from afar, he doesn't come across as a guy who wants to build and run a company for years, but who is good at building innovative stuff.

jaspertheghost2• 17 years ago

Asking whether you'll jump or not, is always the wrong question. If you're asking yourself that question, you're probably not an entrepreneur. Most entrepreneurs that are successful have multiple previous startups and have always made the jump early and frequently (Jobs and Wozniak with their illegal long distance calling hack, Zuckerberg with a collaborative fitering music sharing app in high school, Aaron (Mint.com) with his multiple startups back in college, etc). Doing every progressive experience gets you used to doing another startup and making you comfortable for the jump. Doing a startup isn't like rolling the dice and seeing if you can win the lottery, it's more of a compulsion.

There was a blog entry :

http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2008/04/ten-questions-a.html "Is there an ideal age for an entrepreneur? No, although most start at a young age since they don't belong in big companies. But once an entrepreneur always an entrepreneur. We've got one entrepreneur in our portfolio who is approaching 60 and working on his fourth company."

gruseom2• 17 years ago

Woz wasn't an entrepreneur in this sense. He was a hacker who lived for computers and planned to work at HP his entire career.

jaspertheghost2• 17 years ago

Sure, but he was always an inveterate tinkerer. Much like the passage described below:

http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/b/bennis-genius.html

Many of the people in our Great Groups are tinkerers--the kind of people who, as children, took the family television apart and tried to put it together again. They are people willing to spend thousands of hours finding out how things work, including things that don't yet exist. There's a joke about engineers that captures the spirit of many participants in creative collaborations. An engineer meets a frog who offers the engineer anything he wants if he will kiss the frog. "No," says the engineer. "Come on," says the frog. "Kiss me, and I'll turn into a beautiful woman." "Nah," says the engineer. "I don't have time for a girlfriend ...but a talking frog, that's really neat. " Members of Great Groups don't fear technology, they embrace it. And they all think that creating the future is really neat.

Skeletor• 17 years ago

Everyone has to do their first start-up at some point. Just because you haven't done a start-up failed or otherwise by the time you are 30, doesn't mean that you won't ever do one. I think in this economy a lot of people who haven't previously done a start-up full time are finding that an option. I definitely found that was the case for me.

So, You Want to Be an Entrepreneur

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