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Thread: 'Only insane people' are entrepreneurs

  1. #1

    'Only insane people' are entrepreneurs

    https://www.theglobeandmail.com/repo...article626850/

    Feb. 01, 2011




    Penelope Trunk is arguably the world’s most influential guidance counsellor.

    She pokes, prods and inspires a generation of new professionals who read her syndicated career-advice column, her Brazen Careerist blog, or her book of the same name. Her works have essentially become required reading for young professionals who want to get ahead in the new economy.

    Ms. Trunk knows firsthand the pros and cons of choosing entrepreneurship as a career – she has started three venture capital-backed companies, leading Income Diary to add Ms. Trunk to the list of the Top 30 Female Internet Entrepreneurs.

    I asked Ms. Trunk for her advice for people considering entrepreneurship as a career.

    Q: What would you tell someone trying to decide between starting a company and joining the corporate world?

    A: You have to make a choice: do you want to go to work every day feeling safe and having someone take care of you, or do you want your learning curve to be steeper and higher? It’s a lot easier to be in the corporate world. There’s no upside but there’s no downside. It’s just peaceful, and who doesn’t want peaceful?

    Q: You sound kind of down on entrepreneurship, which is strange coming from a three-time entrepreneur. Aren’t there some people who should choose entrepreneurship as a career?

    A: There are some people who get fired from every corporate job they have ever had – those people are the entrepreneurs. Another way to know if you are born to be an entrepreneur is if you can’t stop the ideas from coming.

    Q: What advice would you have for people determined to start their own business despite your warnings?

    A: I went to graduate school for creative writing, and on the first day of school the professor came in and said: “If there is any other career you can do, you must do it. This is the worst career ever. You make no money, it’s high risk, nobody gives you any good feedback, so anyone who can think of anything else to do should get up and leave.” I think entrepreneurship is a lot like a career as a creative writer. Relying on supporting a family with your crazy, high-risk idea, and putting all your own money and time into it is insane. So only insane people do it.

    Q: Do you really think entrepreneurs are crazy?

    A: There was a great article in the Harvard Business Review, which describes how venture capitalists decide who to fund. Venture capitalists are looking for someone who is somewhat crazy — just on the right side of being a psychopath.

    Q: Based on the way you have described it, why would anyone choose a career in entrepreneurship?

    A: Entrepreneurship is something that chooses you. I also think we have to make a distinction between venture-backed entrepreneurs and self-employed individuals. Self-employment is just making money on the side, and that’s open to everyone. A lot of people can get one or two clients for something they know how to do. They’re making money on the side without a corporate bank account backing them or a boss to tell them what to do.

    Q: All three of your start-ups have been venture-backed. What advice would you have for a start-up looking to attract an outside investment from an angel or a venture capitalist?

    A: I can’t stress enough how crazy running a venture-backed company is. It is extremely high risk. You’re always working for someone who couldn’t give a $#@! about how well your business is doing; they just want to know if you’re going to exit or not. Creating a business that saves the world and generates enough money to support your family is irrelevant if there is no exit. Venture-backed businesses are a whole different ball game. They are extremely fast-paced because the venture capitalist’s return on investment is based on a time frame.

    Q: So we should avoid venture capital?

    A: It depends on what you want to do. Do you want your company to get very big very fast, or do you want a lifestyle business? Do you want to work 15-hour days or have an easy salary? Do you want to be on the cover of Fortune magazine, or do you want to watch your kid’s softball game? Every 20-year-old will say ‘I want the venture capital,’ and every 45-year-old will say ‘I don’t.’



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  3. #2
    You might have to be crazy to try it today with all the regulation and licensing and mandatory handouts to employees. Running a business is much more than an idea. Ideas are easy. Creativity is easy. Anybody can come up with an idea. Executing that idea in every day logistical terms is what's hard.

  4. #3
    Jobs are risky. THere is no security in giving complete control to someone else. If the market tanks, job goes away, family crisis; you're at the mercy of another human.

    logic eludes.

  5. #4
    Chester Copperpot
    Member

    shes absolutely right... if you want greatness you need to be crazy, because thats the only way to get there.

  6. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by Chester Copperpot View Post
    shes absolutely right... if you want greatness you need to be crazy, because thats the only way to get there.
    That's not the only way but not many can get a contract from a 3 letter agency - http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthr...M-CIA-contract

  7. #6
    Execution trumps any capital, business plan or idea.

  8. #7
    https://hbr.org/2016/10/why-are-immi...ntrepreneurial

    Immigrants are also by nature risk takers- they take risks by leaving their home countries usually in search of better opportunities.

    Why Are Immigrants More Entrepreneurial?

    What do Arianna Huffington (Huffington Post), Dietrich Mateschitz (Red Bull), Elon Musk (Tesla, SpaceX), and Sergey Brin (Google) have in common? Apart from their success as entrepreneurs, they all share one distinct characteristic: extensive cross-cultural experience. Huffington grew up in Athens and studied in London before starting her career as a politician and media entrepreneur. Mateschitz spent considerable time overseas as a marketing salesman prior to founding Red Bull. Musk migrated from South Africa to the U.S. as young adult. Brin left the Soviet Union with his family after facing growing anti-Semitism and moved to the U.S., where he later cofounded Google.

    Their stories are prominent examples of a widespread pattern. In the U.S., immigrants are almost twice as likely to become entrepreneurs as native-born U.S. citizens. Immigrants represent 27.5% of the countries’ entrepreneurs but only around 13% of the population. Similarly, about one-fourth of all technology and engineering companies started in the U.S. between 2006 and 2012 had at least one immigrant cofounder. And this pattern extends beyond the U.S. — data from the 2012 Global Entrepreneurship Monitor showed that the vast majority of the 69 countries surveyed reported higher entrepreneurial activity among immigrants than among natives, especially in growth-oriented ventures.

    Research has suggested that selection and discrimination effects may be driving this phenomenon. It appears plausible that entrepreneurial individuals are more likely to migrate and that immigration policies in many countries favor highly motivated and capable individuals. Additionally, discrimination against immigrants in labor markets may exert pressure on them to seek self-employment.

    In a recent study, we investigated a different explanation: Cross-cultural experiences may increase individuals’ capabilities to identify promising business ideas. By living in different cultures, they encounter new products, services, customer preferences, and communication strategies, and this exposure may allow the transfer of knowledge about customer problems or solutions from one country to another. By applying this kind of arbitrage, a temporary or permanent migrant can decide to replicate a profitable product or business model available in one country but not in another. Successful companies such as Starbucks (inspired by coffeehouses in Italy) and the German online retailer Zalando (inspired by Zappos) exemplify the potential of this strategy.

    Cross-cultural experiences may also stimulate creativity. Interacting with two or more cultural contexts can help immigrants combine diverse ideas, solutions, and customer problems in order to create something entirely new. This principle is illustrated by the origin story of Red Bull. When Dietrich Mateschitz traveled to Thailand in the 1980s, he observed the popularity of a cheap energizing drink called Krating Daeng among truck drivers and construction workers. Finding that it helped ease his jet lag, he decided to license the product and sell it in Austria under the name Red Bull Energy Drink. Rather than simply importing the product, Mateschitz realized the opportunity to combine the newly obtained knowledge about a product (a drink popular among truck drivers) and the knowledge about his home market (conservative beverages market, growing clubbing scene) into an entirely new business idea. By adapting size, taste, and brand, he created the first energy drink for the alternative clubbing scene — something previously unseen in the Thai and Austrian markets.

    More at link.


    https://www.forbes.com/sites/hbswork.../#3b563f7d3de3

    One Quarter Of Entrepreneurs In The United States Are Immigrants


    Debates over the pluses and minuses of immigrant entrepreneurs on the American economy are white hot, but one thing seems stubbornly lacking from them: facts.

    The arguments are familiar by now. Immigrants take jobs from native-born Americans, claims one side in lobbying for tougher immigration rules and policies. Proponents claim that, far from reducing employment opportunities, immigrants actually help create jobs.

    Kerr and Pekkala Kerr calculated that approximately 24% of all entrepreneurs during their sample period were immigrants—an outsized proportion given that immigrants comprise only about 15% of the population. This contribution, however, was roughly in keeping with some of Kerr’s prior work on immigrant contributions to U.S. patents.

    In addition, Kerr and Pekkala Kerr were able to show for the first time that the immigrant percentage of entrepreneurship is growing over time, from 17% in 1995 to 28% in 2008 for a stable cohort of states present during the full period. The LEHD is being extended to 2012, and the authors will update the platform to extend further out.

  9. #8
    I go back an forth between having the drive to expand my current business and start others, and having the feeling that everything is so tiresome and just wanting to coast.
    Tax is theft. War is murder. Conscription is slavery. Government is organized crime.



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