
So, You Want to Be an Entrepreneur  - prakash
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123498006564714189.html
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swombat
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 ;-)

~~~
tptacek
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.

~~~
swombat
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.

~~~
tptacek
Ok, but let me be devil's advocate, based on my experience trying to get
everyone at my company to be more entrepreneurial:

* Some people suck at selling, and freeze up on the phone. They'll put off critical business tasks because they're shy or don't like feeling like whores. And they'll fail because of it.

* Some people (cough cough) are great at starting things but have no follow-through ability --- or, in our industry, will tweak and tinker endlessly but never release code.

* Lacking an actual playbook for "how to run a company", some people will hew to whatever received wisdom they find, and thus waste weeks getting 110% unit test coverage or waste tens of thousands of dollars hiring a human resources person.

~~~
swombat
Totally. And those people will fail at their first 1, 2, 3 or more businesses.
Perhaps they'll never succeed. But, much like tweaking and tinkering endlessly
and never releasing, it's unproductive to worry endlessly and not try.

I still suck at making phone calls. I've found a way around that - I have
other people with me who can do that better.

Ten years ago I had no follow-through. It took me a while, but I learned to
overcome that. Tweaking and tinkering endlessly was a problem in my first
start-up. It cost me a good kick in the face (figuratively) and I learned to
release early and often.

Those are all likely mistakes, and some of them you can avoid by reading about
them but most of them you'll have to face personally before you overcome them.
And, who knows, maybe you'll never overcome them! But the worry should never
stop you from trying.

------
jaspertheghost
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."

~~~
gruseom
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.

~~~
jaspertheghost
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.

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

~~~
tptacek
Freelancing.

~~~
davidw
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.

~~~
tptacek
People who are good at freelancing structure their practice so they have
plenty of "bench time" built into their rates. The freelancers I've known
throughout my career tend to be _more_ carefree than the rank-and-file
developers.

More importantly, a consulting practice is a _much_ better platform to build a
product business on than a full time job. You can carve out plenty of time for
your new business (it's just another one of your clients), you can staff up
consulting to make time for the product, and if you fail, you don't have to
beg for your job back; it's always there.

~~~
davidw
I do consulting myself, and prefer it to working a 9 to 5, just that I don't
see it as a viable long term option.

~~~
tptacek
There is probably a night-and-day difference between consulting by yourself,
and staffing an actual consulting practice. Solo freelancing is still probably
better for an entrepreneur than a full-time job, but running a multi-person
consultancy _is_ running a business, and a big % of the headaches, overheads,
and challenges of running a product company carry over.

~~~
davidw
Oh, certainly, but that's kind of back to square one:-) I like to be
independent and work with cool people, I don't want to be a boss or bossed
around, and I like to build cool stuff.

~~~
gruseom
I sympathize with your last sentence entirely, and with your "sort of"
reaction to the article as well. Out of curiosity, how do you feel about
talking to users? That's one thing I don't feel ambivalent about. If someone
is using what I've made, I really want to talk to that person and find out
what would make them happy; if they're happy I want to find out what would
delight them. I'm kind of hoping this will make up for the lack of some of
what the WSJ considers "entrepreneurial" qualities.

The more I think about it, the more I'm annoyed by that article. The way it
begins - "Make sure you're cut out for it first" - seems self-refuting to me.
The inner drive that causes someone to do creative or bold things doesn't sit
down to ponder 10-point lists crafted by pseudo-experts before deciding
whether it's "cut out for it". Every time I listen to this kind of thing I
later wish I had ignored it.

p.s. I've done consulting and freelancing too. You're never working on
something that is your own. After a while, you realize your soul is starving.
Meanwhile you've become a crack addict, where the crack is your hourly rate.

pp.s. That doesn't mean it isn't better than being an employee, which is a
form of serfdom.

~~~
davidw
Oh, I definitely like customers and talking to people, and that kind of thing.
I'm not an antisocial person. I actually prefer the customer relationship a
lot more than I do that of employer/employee in that either one of is pretty
much free to do as we please - they don't have to buy my stuff or my services,
and if they're seriously annoying, I can decide I don't want them as a
customer, or simply ignore them. Granted, you can't always do that, but
still... it's just a happier situation than having to order people around, or
having someone order you around.

