The Best Entrepreneur I Know

http://donpottinger.net/blog/2015/01/19/the-best-entrepreneur-i-know.html

by strukturedkaos • 12 years ago

312 60 12 years ago

bstahlhood• 12 years ago

Great article. Thank you for sharing your experience. I had to do the "I got something in my eye" move so those around me would not think I was crying :)

strukturedkaos3• 12 years ago

Thanks! This past weekend, I was able to tell Dennis how much he means to me, and I had to catch myself because I was beginning to choke up. It ended up being the inspiration behind this post.

beat2• 12 years ago

There's a lot more to entrepreneurship than the weird little bubble of software startups. Entrepreneurs are just people who take a chance in order to make a real difference.

I grew up poor, and one of the hardest things about being poor is that there are so few role models for success. Except for teachers, I didn't know anyone educated. Except for the people my father worked for (and mostly hated), I didn't know anyone wealthy or successful. More of the grown men I knew were failures, criminals, and addicts than successes.

As a smart child in this environment, teachers and other authority figures expected intelligence to lead to obedience, and were frustrated that I didn't care that much about their rules, that I wasn't interested in being especially good at being mediocre. With a slightly different twist in the wind, I might well have wound up a criminal myself, although I like to think I'd have been a very good one.

Even when I left my hometown to go to college, it took me years to adjust to a "normal" life. And it took me years more to realize again what I knew instinctively as a child - that succeeding at mediocrity wasn't a worthwhile life.

The men and women who have made a point of being social entrepreneurs, of being role models in communities that desperately need them - they're better, braver, and tougher than most of the founders we fawn over here. And they'll make a more meaningful contribution to the world.

iolothebard2• 12 years ago

I wanted to be a cat burglar as a kid.

In all the studying, learning, planning and risk assessment I realized it's easier and less risky to just go to college. That and stealing isn't really something to aspire to in life.

Probably why I didn't stay in finance/accounting/banking. At least salesmen have to convince you of their lies, the money wonks just take it out of your account every month.

hueving2• 12 years ago

the money wonks just take it out of your account every month.

With a statement like that it sounds like you lack some important critical thinking skills. Try to provide concrete examples of things rather than echoing standard claptrap.

Ntrails• 12 years ago

I still want to be a cat burglar. I don't really actually want to do the whole robbery thing, so much as plan it all and see if I could get away with it.

I'm glad computer games give me the chance to play at stuff to be honest, it's a great outlet.

cglee• 12 years ago

Software startups also tend to be very product-oriented and focus on global markets. But the most successful people I know (I don't know any billionares) run service-oriented small businesses and are focused on changing the neighborhood.

Changing your own 'hood is the first step to changing the world. There's not enough being said about serving your neighbors and getting to know your regulars on a first name basis.

beat2• 12 years ago

I feel that, in a way, I am changing my own 'hood. As an enterprise engineer, I'm trying to solve what I believe to be the most painful problem experienced by enterprise engineers - trying to figure out what caused complex systems to break down, so a fix can be formulated. This problem really sucks because it leads to a lot of yelling, finger-pointing, all-nighters, and general panic - bad social behavior that has nothing to do with the technical problem-solving we love.

So yeah, I feel I'm going after the problems of my peers, of my tribe. My 'hood, even if it's a virtual kind of 'hood.

visakanv4• 12 years ago

Entrepreneurs are just people who take a chance in order to make a real difference.

I'd go so far as to say- entrepreneurs are just people who are trying to solve problems. I get annoyed when I hear people ask things like "How do I become an entrepreneur?" in an aspirational way, as though it's some sort of cool club where all the cool kids are hanging out.

An entrepreneur is just a person who's so bothered by a particular problem, who's so dissatisfied with the status quo that she decided to get her hands dirty and make a dent in it.

arximboldi• 12 years ago

So now Karl Marx was an enterpreneur.

slimetree• 12 years ago

This made me smile, but it would've been nice to read more about what he and Dennis actually talked about.

strukturedkaos3• 12 years ago

Thanks for reading! I would love to go into more detail about what we talked about, but it varies so much from session to session. I could write an entire book on our conversations.

cshenoy• 12 years ago

A book on your conversations with him could be a fascinating read. Just sayin...

SwellJoe3• 12 years ago

I'm happy to see there's been a lot more discussion lately in Silicon Valley and entrepreneurial communities, in general, about the importance of role models who are people of color and women. This article only covers one side of that (not that it is less interesting or touching for not covering the other side)...the other side is that until white folks in our industry, or in other industries, are regularly seeing and interacting with people of color and women in leadership roles, we will likely continue to allow unintentional biases to affect our decisions and our workplaces, probably to the detriment of all (but mostly to the detriment of people of color and women).

There have been a number of studies showing the unintentional white supremacist thinking that even folks who think of themselves as progressive and anti-racist exhibit (and even people of color and women can fall prey to these same biases against their own race or gender). That perpetuates a cycle that can only be broken by visible disruption of the cycle. i.e. people who aren't historically in leadership roles, who aren't historically in tech roles, being empowered and successful in those roles.

Note that I'm not making governmental policy suggestions here. I'm making cultural and systemic observations. I don't know the solutions, really, but awareness and acknowledgment of the problem is certainly one of the early steps.

Anyway, I loved having a good barber shop. I haven't found a good one since moving back to Texas, but it really is a nice thing to have a regular barber who does a nice job, and knows and cares about his community. It's unfortunate that there are so few barbers left...they've been replaced by the chain haircutter places that hire people straight out of beauty school; those businesses are rarely worker-owned (they rent the chairs, or are part-time employees), and rarely have any significant ties to the community (though they are often franchises, possibly owned by someone in the same city or, at least, the same state).

strukturedkaos3• 12 years ago

Excellent points - raising awareness by sharing these type of experiences is part of the reason why I've finally begun to blog. It's important not only for people of color working in or aspiring to work in the tech industry, but also for the demographic that doesn't understand what it's like to be a black unicorn in a tech world. It raises the empathy levels of everyone involved.

girvo• 12 years ago

why I've finally begun to blog

I'm glad you did, and I'm looking forward to reading more!

meric5• 12 years ago

It's important for people to have role models they can identify with. And role models are selected by those who are looking for them, not by the government.

SwellJoe3• 12 years ago

Government can definitely play a role, however, in how many kids grow up to become role models. We could talk about the prison industrial complex and the rate at which it imprisons young black and brown folks, compared to white folks, even for crimes that are committed by white folks at the same rate or higher (like drug crimes; white folks do more drugs and serve less time for it than black folks). Felons don't often become leaders in the business world.

There are systemic changes that are needed to fix this problem. I didn't think it was particularly relevant to this article so I explicitly excluded it from my comment, but one cannot deny that government plays a huge role in all of this.

yummyfajitas2• 12 years ago

There is a very straightforward way to mitigate the effect of biases. Make everything as algorithmic as possible and don't use biasing factors as inputs to the algorithms. This also fixes more biases than just the the ones with sympathetic victims - you'll hire both the woman and the ugly socially awkward guy with kickass github profiles.

Unintentional bias lives in the subjective and human parts of our procedures. The fewer decisions humans make, the less bias you see.

See also this blog post I wrote recently. Drivers I flag on the street explicitly and intentionally discriminate against me about 80% of the time. With Uber/Ola/Taxi4sure it's 0%. https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2015/why_i_like_uber.html

mseebach2• 12 years ago

Nobody disagrees with that. But 100 years of management research, and we're nowhere near an objective measure for what makes a good hire.

The objective measure for an Uber ride is orders of magnitude simpler: "is reasonably civilised, unlikely to soil the car or abuse the driver" and even then, their approach to deciding who fits, is to just try, then kick you off the system if you don't live up to the criteria.

rfergie• 12 years ago

Make everything as algorithmic as possible and don't use biasing factors as inputs to the algorithms

When you control for gender the gender pay gap disappears.

By which I mean deciding which factors are biasing factors and which are not is not clear cut.

DigitalSea• 12 years ago

This is a really heart-warming and great read.

I think a lot of businesses tech and non-tech alike can take a page out of Dennis' book. You're not just running a business, for some, it can be a much more personal experience if you are willing to make the effort. As the author Don points out, he is willing to drive 30 minutes to not only see his mother, but also to get his haircut. You can't buy that kind of customer loyalty.

As with most things in life, sometimes just listening is all you need to do. Listen to your customers, make them feel important and valued. Surprisingly simple, but something most businesses fail to do.

jacquesm• 12 years ago

Beats a new way to share cats online for me. If you want to see what 'change the world' means look no further than this.

abalone• 12 years ago

Fantastic man, and barbershops have long played an important role in African-American communities.

But as to the comment about MLK, it would be a mistake to comprehend the civil rights movement as being embodied in entrepreneurialism.

This being a startup community of entrepreneurs, it is tempting for us to celebrate the power of individual free enterprise paired with social cause. And that is noble. But the civil rights movement stands for organized action to fight racism at a systemic level. It is the more conservative, privileged sector that focuses on "pull yourself up by your own bootstraps" individual entrepreneurialism as the pathway to racial equality.

The civil rights movement is about organized mass action to address the racism and disadvantages inherent in white-dominated institutions and social relations. That is what MLK stood for: fixing white racism and structural inequality, not merely black role models and self-esteem.

qznc• 12 years ago

Martin Luther King also demanded his followers to become better people to disprove the stupid-savage-criminal image they had. The Black Panthers also stood for fixing white racism and structural inequality.

It is this "become a better person" aspect of MLK, which Dennis embodies, imho.

aceperry2• 12 years ago

Great article. Also brings up an aspect of the tech startup mentality that bothers me from time to time. From my reading of pg and ycombinator's focus on fast hockey stick like growth curves, it seems that you can easily dismiss/overlook small and steady businesses like Klippers which can perform very important roles in our lives.

I'm not criticizing pg and the ycombinator crowd, in fact I have much respect and admiration for what they're trying to achieve. But I think small businesses don't get the respect that they deserve.

NhanH• 12 years ago

It's actually pretty interesting that small/lifestyle businesses get a lot of respect on Hacker News (pinboard, improvely, Appointment reminder and their creators are all very well revered here). In fact, a lot more than the general population (from my point of view) have for those businesses.

danieltillett• 12 years ago

This is because a pretty large percentage of the readers of HN are pretty smart - they recognise that a good lifestyle business is what smart people should be building.

aceperry2• 12 years ago

It seems to me that the focus at HN is on startups that aim for huge growth, and not really small businesses; especially not small, stable businesses that don't have much potential to grow very large. The subject of the article is a small business that won't really scale well. One of the biggest topics of discussion at HN is around the topic of scaling a business.

I'm glad to see an article like this which reminds us that small businesses can be an important part of our society. I also see some efforts by some people in the ycombinator network to expand beyond the mechanics of doing startups. I attended last year's startup school and was blown away and inspired by one of the speakers, Danae Ringelmann: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPbHf4i6CrQ&list=PLQ-uHSnFig...

enigami• 12 years ago

It's 8.30 am here and the first thing I read today is this inspirational article. People like Mr. Dennis lead by example and that inspires others.

Next time when you visit him, just pass on my Hug!!

thetruthseeker12• 12 years ago

I read the Article. Dennis seems like a nice guy- rather a great guy! But I do think that this article does not particularly embody a spirit of entrepreneurship. Dont get me wrong, Dennis does not embody any negaative spirit, everything positive. It is fitting for MLK day. However, just because it makes us feel warm and fuzzy, it shouldn't be characterized to embody any particular quality that we choose to say it does. It embodies great human spirit, but, rationally thinking, is not fitting example of entrepreneur.

skrebbel• 12 years ago

How very Silicon Valley of you. If he had a "book a haircut" app, would you consider him an enterpreneur then?

thetruthseeker12• 12 years ago

No, I wouldn't consider that alone a great enterprise. It should be determined based on some objective and measurable criteria. Everybody who develops an app is not a great entrepreneur, and everybody who is nice alone is not a great entrepreneur

LukeB_UK• 12 years ago

I also read the article. I think it shows that Dennis is a great entrepreneur. He has been successfully running a business for 20 years and knows his customers and treats them as more than just a customer. This then creates loyalty, enough to cause the author to return there time after time, even when there are likely other barbershops closer.

Dennis has identified a problem that needed to be solved, has solved it and is doing it so well that his customers talk about him and keep returning.

levlandau• 12 years ago

there's an awesome lady at Stanford Hair (http://www.stanfordhair.com/) that simply blew my mind with her kindness. She took customer service to a whole new level. I've since moved from Palo Alto to SF and I've tried really hard to make my schedule work just so I can get a hair cut from her. I think I'm going to make that happen this weekend. I was a fresh PhD dropout living on $600/mo ~ 2 yrs ago, not quite where I want to be but things are much better now, I owe her a download of how things have gone :) OP thanks for the nudge.

known• 12 years ago

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

roycehaynes• 12 years ago

Love the article. It was not the typical post I read on HN, but fitting on several levels. Thanks for sharing!

freshfey• 12 years ago

Beautifully written, thanks for sharing.

This reminds me of this movie: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108560/ (Who's the Man?)

A 1993 classic with a lot of known Hip Hop artists, the main characters basically help a well-known and very helpful barber in the community by joining the police and taking care of the community. Quite funny and entertaining.

D-Train• 12 years ago

Dennis sounds like good guy. If I didn't quit buzzing my head, I'd be interested in going to him.

But to a greater point: entrepreneurship isn't just about the millions or billions we more often hear in the news. Instead, it's also about the small biz owners like Dennis who aspire for great things for their communities, their family and friends, and yes, themselves.

We should shoot for the stars, but not get disappointed because we only reached the moon. Or heck, if we were able to "fly" at all... that's awesome.

Great write-up! Now, can Dennis also have an app? I'd like to help with that.

The Best Entrepreneur I Know

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