

What sort of entrepreneur are you anyway? - grellas
http://swombat.com/2011/5/6/what-entrepreneur

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lichichen
I feel this article had great potential, but it somehow strayed away and
missed a lot of important points. As well, the title should be along the lines
of “Understanding Entrepreneur Values” or of such. And Swombat I would love to
hear your thoughts on the concept of “how to stay true” “questioning values”
and digging deeper into the basic concepts we have build around the idea of
“Entrepreneur”

That being said, here are my thoughts.

1) I don’t feel the notion of “Good Vs. Evil” is remotely relevant. They are
labels we put on Social accepted behavior. Instead, the argument should
revolve around then notion of how Entrepreneurs respond to incentives, for
instances in the case of “Should I sell my company for x million, and leave my
employees in the cold” or dealing with pressure “My company is not doing so
well, shall I cut back on my CRM program, or fire employees”

These are more related to the notion of “entrepreneur value” where as serving
the customers and having good employees are high value tasks, and choosing
between one may come down to what is “valued” higher for the founder.

A more psychology related piece on being a founder:
[http://bhorowitz.com/2011/04/01/what%E2%80%99s-the-most-
diff...](http://bhorowitz.com/2011/04/01/what%E2%80%99s-the-most-difficult-
ceo-skill-managing-your-own-psychology/)

2) I would also like to take a minute to explore some of the entrepreneurial
values as listed by OP and dissect reasons behind the actions. If we are
talking why some Entrepreneurs put “treat customers right” above the “bottom
line” or vise versa, it really isn’t much about being a “good” entrepreneur or
a “bad” entrepreneur. In the book “Confession of an Ad Man” by David Ogily, he
argues that the reason behind why companies are not putting a lot more
marketing dollars into their marketing programs is because often consumer
sentiment and marketing results is an un-measureable thing. As a business
student, I can tell you that we are trained to be scientist, in the sense that
we are taught scientific methods that are based on quality research that
someone somewhere has quantified. Something that is unquantifiable is a scary
thing, because

A) We cannot prove it’s success B) We are not sure if we are doing it right C)
Shareholders would have a hard time grasping the results

As humans, we like to be right in the most efficient manner. Therefore
anything unquantifiable, like investing behind raising consumer values is a
scary thing. Hence why a lot of businesses care more about bottom line then
customer experience. Although this trend is changing =]. Now you might be
thinking, can’t we peg a value against returning shoppers and aren’t there a
lot of studies in the recent support the notion that returning customers have
a high value. Yes and yes! Again, companies are slowly moving toward that
direction and almost all (and their shareholder) still measure success based
on bottom line. Overall, It’s not the notion of Good entrepreneur vs Evil
entrepreneur, but external and personality traits that affect action.

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mdinstuhl
Thank you for writing this. I am relatively new to the whole entrepreneur /
startup scene and I have already met some of the most RADICALLY different
people I could imagine.

I have left startup companies based entirely upon the values of the co-
founders. Their goals (REAL goals, not the goals listed in their mission
statement) were simply too different from my own.

Again, thanks for a great post!

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tejaswiy
Completely offtopic, but every time I open one of your articles, my first
point of focus goes on to the photo on the side. Was this intentional or an
accident?

It's really cool though, normally I don't pay attention to who wrote an
article, and just skim through to see if it's interesting. Here, the initial
focus on the photo reminds me that you're a very good blogger, based on other
articles that you've written in the past and grabs my complete focus right
away.

~~~
swombat
Thanks for the compliment, much appreciated!

It is intentional to draw some attention (though not to distract from the
article), for two reasons.

First, some people complained that they liked the articles but didn't know
what my credentials were, so while the initial design for swombat.com was much
more minimalist (like DaringFireball's), I realised that I'm not John Gruber
with a fanatical following of hundreds of thousands, and so I still need to
convey who I am to the majority who haven't heard of me.

Secondly, a good friend advised me that blogs are much more memorable and
engaging if the author's picture is visible (which your comment supports). And
it makes sense - people are naturally very good at recognising and remembering
faces.

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michaelochurch
Good vs. evil is a completely different debate from the practical balancing of
concerns an entrepreneur faces on a day-to-day basis. The OP mixes these two
radically different orders of decision making. Good and evil are not just
about misprioritization of values, and most entrepreneurs are good people
balancing decisions of a more practical nature, such as when to hire and when
not, that don't really have moral "right answers".

 _Bad people have no problem with good values. Irreconcilable opposites are
made from the same handful of values representing goodness._

As for evil vs. values, evil generally comes in two forms: fanatical and
selfish evil, which may both exist in one person. Invariably, both exist in
evil movements: Hitler being an example of fanatical evil and Eichmann being
an example of selfish evil. OP's statement is only true (sometimes) of the
latter. Fanatical evil is characterized by the insistence on one value, which
may be good (economic equality, as in communism) or bad ("racial purity", as
in Nazism) at its root but is, in either case, given such an absurdly high
priority over other values (humanism, reason) as to have catastrophic results.

Selfish evil, on the other hand, is characterized by narcissism, psychopathy,
and a complete lack of values, but also a willingness to adopt the appearance
of whatever values are in fashion. A selfishly evil person cares only about
self-advancement.

The fanatical kind is what we associate with villians like Hitler and bin
Laden, and it's really destructive when such people get into power. In
business, it's far more common to encounter the selfish kind of evil: the
office psychopath. This is because, although they're less damaging to the
world, office psychopaths are just a lot more common. You can think of
selfishly evil people like tornadoes, which can cause a lot of harm on a local
scale but rarely globally, and fanatical evil people like hurricanes, which
have a broader effect.

On the small scale, selfish evil is more dangerous because these people are
more common and, unlike the fanatically evil who usually end up
institutionalized, there are a lot of them in high positions of power and it
is impossible to spot them unless one directly sees them doing bad things,
because they act like anyone else. On the large scale, fanatical evil is more
dangerous to the world because it's better at PR. It can dress itself up as
"virtue" and prey on weak minds.

~~~
anamax
> by the insistence on one value, which may be good (economic equality, as in
> communism)

If nothing else, experience with said insistence suggests that economic
equality may not be good.

But, even if we ignore that experience, is there reason to believe that
economic equality is a good thing. Is it even an "all other things being
equal" good thing?

