So, what exactly IS an Entrepreneur?
So, I have a challenge for you all. One that I think many of you out there can identify with.
Help me start to define what it means to be an “entrepreneur”.
I’m not talking about entrepreneurial qualities either. My Entrepreneurial Qualities Survey series of last year did a great job of getting a conversation started on the qualities required to be a successful entrepreneur. I think we identified a good starting list of qualities, and your input combined with the results has helped me think through what I want to change about the survey and I’ll be running a new one very soon.
No, in this post I’d like to start a different, but complementary discussion. I’d like to examine what it means to be an entrepreneur.
It’s not your employment status
Most of us tend to think of entrepreneurs as either people who have quit their jobs to work full time on their dream, or work on it after-hours in their garage. Truth is, there are all kinds of entrepreneurs. Many companies promote entrepreneurial activity, Intrapreneurship, within their walls by fostering a culture of risk-taking and innovation either throughout the company or in selected groups.
There are also people, I call them Extrapreneurs, who pursue entrepreneurial endeavors “on the side” while maintaining traditional employment. Maybe it’s a bit of consulting, maybe it’s an online business; but they are still taking an entrepreneurial route.
It’s not how much you make
There are a variety of entrepreneurial support organizations in my region; I happen to work for one. There are also a number of entrepreneurial networking organizations. The conditions for membership in these organizations vary widely and you could find an organization to join whether you were a pre-revenue startup or a $50M company, and everywhere in between.
It’s not even how successful you are
While my part of the country tends to be a bit more conservative on this issue, traditional thinking on the coasts is that the investment risk in you as an entrepreneur goes down with each venture you start regardless of whether it was successful or not. Certainly this is not a statement that applies to all entrepreneurs, but I have heard it used in conjunction with some fairly high-profile meltdowns; that the lessons learned from the failure made the entrepreneur even more valuable in his or her next startup.
So, WHAT is it?
I certainly don’t have all the answers, but I have a couple thoughts written down. I’d like to hear from you all first though. Tell me when a person becomes an entrepreneur. Tell me what has to happen for an activity to be entrepreneurial. I know we have some smart, entrepreneurial folks reading this blog so tell me what you think.
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Early January definition:
An entrepreneur recognizes an opportunity (or market failure) and then uses creative and innovative resources to answer the opportunity (or solve a problem).
A person becomes an entrepreneur when the drive to solve the problem or deliver the opportunity becomes greater than the reality that the opportunity is not immediately connected to a paycheck.