A Formula for Success

I met an entrepreneur a couple of weeks ago who was so inspirational with his passion and vision, that it was contagious to me. His eyes were sparkling while he was telling me about what he was doing. He already had a team of 10, and he was so busy with projects that he was considering to start growing his team further. Despite all that momentum, he found himself feeling down because since launching his startup, he barely had any time to be creative and visionary, instead finding himself swamped in the administrative and business development tasks.

He was actually so down that he started doubting himself as an entrepreneur. Was he right? Does he have what it takes to be an entrepreneur? In fact, what is entrepreneurship? What does it mean to be an entrepreneur? Was he instead falling short at managing his startup as a businessperson, rather than at being its founder, and if so, what is the difference between an entrepreneur and a business-person? These are questions that eat at me because I have met many super-driven entrepreneurs and seen them doubt, fade, and fail at the different stages of setting up or running their startups. 

WHAT IS ENTREPRENEURSHIP?

Entrepreneurship isn’t an easy thing to learn. The typical ways to learn about it are not very helpful. One of the typical ways is to listen to the experience of a successful entrepreneur, but is it really relevant what he did in 2002 in Silicon Valley, when we are in 2019 in another part of the globe? Another way is to listen to people coming up with formulas about entrepreneurship, like “10 steps to follow to build a successful company.”

> They are creative, and can envision new things and make them happen.
> They are opportunistic in the sense of seeing a need in the market, and turning it into a business opportunity.
> They are self-confident and believe they can navigate any challenges and bumps.
> They are courageous in taking risks, and mobilizing people around them.
> They are individualistic in the sense that they need to be the masters of their own destiny (or at least try to!). 

While I wish it were that easy, it actually can’t be further from the truth. Entrepreneurship is not a science. At its core, entrepreneurship is about attempting to do something new, be it an innovative idea that has never been done before, or an innovative way to copy something done before, but in a new competitive landscape. Only by being dropped in the deep waters do you really learn entrepreneurship.

So, then, is entrepreneurship about coming up with a breakthrough and introducing something never done before, much like the iPhone, cryptocurrency, or the Google search engine? Or, is it about looking at some of the pressing problems we have, such as, say, 60% mortality by a heart attack, pollution, overpopulation, and trying to find solutions? Or, is it about copying a proven model, and implementing it in a new geography with some form of localization, and some incremental enhancements? Or, is it about job creation within disadvantaged populations, and an alternative to unemployment?

Maybe entrepreneurship is all of that together: innovation, problem-solving, opportunism... The real question to ask ourselves is what kind of entrepreneurs we are. Instead of going through a narrow definition of an entrepreneur, I would rather go through the traits of an entrepreneur. I came across an article with 20 company founders telling Business News Daily what they think the traits of a true entrepreneur are. 

Here is a summary of all their common descriptions: entrepreneurs are driven, creative, opportunistic, self-confident, courageous, individualistic, and stubborn people!

> They are driven by the need to create something and see it grow. 
> They are creative, and can envision new things and make them happen. 
> They are opportunistic in the sense of seeing a need in the market, and turning it into a business opportunity. 
> They are self-confident and believe they can navigate any challenges and bumps. 
> They are courageous in taking risks, and mobilizing people around them. 
> They are individualistic in the sense that they need to be the masters of their own destiny (or at least try to!). 
> They are also stubborn about their vision, and on making things work no matter how many tries it takes.

Read the rest of the article here: A Formula for Success