

Can Entrepreneurs be Made? - hackerbob
http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/27/can-entrepreneurs-be-made/

======
zavulon
I couldn't agree any more. I definitely wasn't a stereotypical "sells lemonade
door-to-door" entrepreneur in school, or in college. Sounds cliche, but I just
didn't care about money. I was more interested in hacking and creating,
starting from Legos, ZX Spectrum computer, etc.

It was only after I entered a corporate hell, was greatly dissatisfied with
it, and read some books that opened my eyes on the whole issue, that I
realized that I needed to be an entrepreneur to really achieve my dreams.

I'm still much better at hacking than business, but I'm learning, and I
believe that eventually, with lots of hard work and some luck, I could be as
successful as some "natural-born" entrepreneurs, if not more.

~~~
mredbord
Which books did you find particularly influential?

~~~
zavulon
\- The first one, even with all its well-known shortcomings, was "Rich Dad
Poor Dad" by Robert Kyosaki. It opened my eyes to "there's another option out
there".

\- Benjamin Franklin's autobiography (translated into modern English).

\- PG's "Hackers and Painters" (why I joined this forum).

\- Tim Ferris's "Four Hour Work Week" (has to be taken with a gigantic grain
of salt, but has many very helpful and practical tips and ideas.)

\- "Mastery" by George Leonard

\- "Good to Great" by Jim Collins

And finally (and I don't want to turn this into a political flamewar, "grain
of salt" applies here as well, etc, etc) but the book that had the most
influence on me was "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand. Unlike all the others on the
list above, it's a work of fiction, but I think it is the best at capturing
and romanticizing the joy and euphoria that you feel when you build something
that works.

~~~
python123
"Rich Dad Poor Dad" - wow. Do you also make vision boards on Youtube and ask
others if they know The Secret?

~~~
realitygrill
C'mon, it's not credible but it's a popular book that gets people to shift
their perspective on money (I read it in 8th grade). I think it deserves
recognition for that, even if the rest of Kiyosaki's stuff is pure shill.

------
pg
Tendencies don't have to be heritable to be inborn. Nor do they have to be
expressed to be heritable.

~~~
cj
How can something be inborn without being heritable? (Unless something is
considered inborn if it is taught extremely early in life...)

~~~
sjf
If a trait is determined by a mutation it is inborn but not inherited.

This is one possible explanation, but I am not a biologist, and I am not sure
when the op intended.

~~~
lkozma
Or if a trait is a composite effect of 'sub-traits' from both parents. It is
inherited in its parts, but neither parents have the whole trait. What I mean:
your dad has A, your mom has B, and AB leads to the successful trait.

------
TrevorBurnham
Any "born vs. made" question is poorly defined. I recently decided to leave
grad school after 2 years to launch a startup. So, now I'm an entrepreneur for
the first time: Was I born or made that way?

I remember reading about Bill Gates and Steve Jobs at the age of 12 and
thinking, "Hey, I'm going to do that!" Then I thought I'd be a senator. Or an
astronaut. I campaigned for Nader and thought Ayn Rand was stupid. Then I
started studying economics and thought I'd be a professor, and maybe Rand was
on to something after all.

So you could easily argue that I was born to be an entrepreneur if you looked
at some slices of my childhood, and you could argue that I was made one if you
looked at others. I'm much more interested in well-defined questions, such as:
Is the Kauffman Foundation's Fast Trac program effective in making people into
entrepreneurs?

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pedalpete
This is like saying 'marathoners are not made, they're born'. It's a
combination of factors. Lots of people have the entrepreneurial spirit, but
are not entrepreneurs. What about all the 'idea' people who don't execute?
where do they fall? are they entrepreneurs?

Couldn't we equally say the common factor is people who 'simply got tired of
working for others, had a great idea they wanted to commercialize, or woke up
one day with an urgent desire to build wealth before they retired. So they
took the big leap.'

Is an "Entrepreneur" anything more than a person with a 'get it done, and do
it right' mentality?

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ojbyrne
Substitute "white and affluent" for entrepreneurial in

"They believe that successful entrepreneurs come from entrepreneurial families
and that they start their entrepreneurial journey by selling lemonade while in
grade school."

and you pretty well have the gist of what Jason, Fred and Silicon Valley VCs
believe in. Not quite racism, but certainly when asked "what does a great
entrepreneur look like?", their answer is "just like me."

~~~
pw0ncakes
That's the natural tendency toward "mirrortocracy". Most people are
disastrously bad at assessing the talent of people who are not like them.

~~~
ojbyrne
Great word.

~~~
pw0ncakes
It's not mine. Mitch Kapor used it at Startup School 2007.

Then Mark Zuckerberg came on an hour later and preached about how you should
only hire young people...

------
cj
If having entrepreneurial parents, going to an ivy-league university (vs a
mediocre college), and having entrepreneurial aspirations early in life
doesn't make you an entrepreneur, what does?

I liked the article, but it focused on proving the current misconceptions
wrong rather than explaining what goes in to the making of a successful
entrepreneur. Any opinions on this?

~~~
apu
_If having entrepreneurial parents, going to an ivy-league university (vs a
mediocre college), and having entrepreneurial aspirations early in life
doesn't make you an entrepreneur, what does?_

The first two don't make an entrepreneur by any means. The last might have
some bearing, but I'd imagine a fair number of people have aspirations and end
up not becoming entrepreneurs, and vice versa, so it seems more of an
indicator than anything else.

~~~
cj
I wasn't implying that I think parents, school, and aspirations makes an
entrepreneur... those are just the points that were covered in the article.

I recognize that they _do not_ make an entrepreneur, what I was asking was
factors other people think _do_ make an entrepreneur.

~~~
tehgeekmeister
my guess is their social situation and their mindset. if they think it's
ridiculous to even try, and everyone around them does too, they won't even
consider it. if they think it could be worthwhile, but everyone around them
thinks it's ridiculous, they still may try, but it's going to require a bit
more balls and dedication. but if they think it's a good idea, and even some
people around them do as well? that's a big deal.

------
abstractbill
_Only a quarter caught the entrepreneurial bug when in college. Half didn’t
even think about entrepreneurship, and they had little interest in it when in
school._

I think the shock of entering an average large corporate bureaucracy makes a
lot of people suddenly very interested in entrepreneurship - I know it's
worked that way for a bunch of my friends.

------
sachinag
_Of course_ they can be made. The biggest thing that YC gives to the founders
it accepts is _permission to be an entrepreneur_. They recognize it, which is
why they beg people who don't get in to keep going since the permission itself
has no intrinsic value.

~~~
tehgeekmeister
i relate to this. the hardest part, in my experience, of getting started with
startups isn't the money, knowledge, or any of that. most of that is available
easily enough in one way or another. what's hard is getting over the idea that
you're crazy for even considering it, and finding people who don't think it's
crazy, so you can bounce ideas off of them.

------
daleharvey
This is something I hear quite a lot from designers that irks me quite a lot.
I would hate to ever leave the impression on someone that I thought what I did
was a natural born talent they couldnt possibly learn.

------
mtkd
They are made by cutting business taxes.

~~~
abstractbill
Do you _really_ believe there are large numbers of would-be entrepreneurs who
are holding back only because of business taxes?

------
sabat
My favorite lines -- totally resonated with me:

 _They simply got tired of working for others, had a great idea they wanted to
commercialize, or woke up one day with an urgent desire to build wealth before
they retired. So they took the big leap._

~~~
F_J_H
Yeah, when I read that, I couldn't help but think of a crowd of people
marching from an office building pumping the goat's head sign above their
heads with Twisted Sister's "We're not gonna take it!" blaring in the
background.

(probably shows that I am a little old and immature at the same time...)

------
pw0ncakes
The major problem is this: the default position on a funding position is close
to 0 (rejection). It might be 0.001. In any case, it's so low that even
talking to a random smart person (who might be the next Sergey Brin) is
treated as not worth the time.

The people who are able to move the needle past 0.5 are usually not the best
bets, but those who are able to project an image that turns the people setting
the appointments and holding the checkbooks into impulsive fanbois. These
traits are almost never those of visionaries, but those of people-pleasers.

It's the same reason why shitheads get laid a lot in college. Only dirtbags
are able to convince an 18-year-old stranger to jump into bed with them,
because their default position (and for very good reason) is not to do that
with a person they don't know. Only the garbage that are able to override that
(necessary) resistance are able to have such "adventures".

~~~
dasil003
The first part of this is sensible, but the analogy is not.

Plenty of non-dirtbags get laid a lot and plenty of assholes don't. Unless of
course you choose to define any confident, gregarious and/or good-looking guy
as a dirtbag, but that would be more defense mechanism than objective quality.

