

UK Entrepreneurs 'scared of failure' - danw
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7035896.stm

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bootload
_"... Almost four in ten would-be entrepreneurs are too scared of failure to
do anything about their business idea ..."_

I'm not sure this is phrased correctly. Firstly I'm an antipodean and also a
keen observer of American style entrepreneurship. I wouldn't characterise UK
Entrepreneurs as _"scared"_ or _"fearful"_. ( _I'm not sure if the article is
specifically tech orientated_ ) I can give several examples to kill this
straight away

\- tbl (though to be fair, tbl is not specifically "business oriented")

\- pg

\- Cal Henderson <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cal_Henderson>

\- James Dyson <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Dyson>

to name but a few. What do they have in common? Well firstly they all hail
from the UK, second they are anything but scared entrepreneurs and thirdly
they are mostly working outside the UK. My theory is that it's the reserved,
risk adverse, steady-as-she-goes business culture that rewards a conservative
approach to making money and punishes those who try to make a go and fail.
Startups are risky. The chance of failure is high. But get enough startups
working, tweak the parameters to help them along you increase the chance of
success.

The situation in Australia, a descendant of UK business culture has a similiar
myopic view of how startup culture works. It's a familiar pattern in Australia
(and from anecdotal observation in the UK) where great ideas flourish in the
abundance only to be killed by culture unable to capitalise for whatever
reason. Be it lack of foresight, marketing, courage or as the article suggests
inability to suspend, "the fear of failure".

So in short it's the culture, not the individual that is fearful. Place the
individual into a culture that fosters, encourages and supports
entrepreneurial activity (namely US startup hubs) and see what happens.

~~~
zandorg
I think (but haven't looked into it recently) that tbl is doing pretty well
from his stake in Akamai tech, so I'd count him as an entrepreneur.

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jsmcgd
How do you define a would be entrepreneur?

