

Suster: What Makes an Entrepreneur? Cojones (2010) - rohunati
http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2010/01/05/what-makes-an-entrepreneur-appetite-for-risk-711/?awesm=bothsid.es_aJs&utm_campaign=&utm_content=awesm-publisher&utm_medium=bothsid.es-twitter&utm_source=t.co

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mindcrime
_I told him to quit his job first. If he wasn’t prepared to do that he wasn’t
a real entrepreneur._

This almost begs for a Wikipedia style {{Citation Needed}} tag. Who says that
you're "not a real entrepreneur" just because you haven't quit your job? I
call bullshit.

Looking at one definition of "entrepreneurship"[1], we get:

 _entrepreneurship is a process of identifying and starting a business
venture, sourcing and organizing the required resources and taking both the
risks and rewards associated with the venture._

So yes, risk _is_ part of the equation. But you can take risks without
quitting your day job. Every dollar you spend on the startup, and every hour
you pour into it, represent risk, since that money and time could have gone
into something (anything) else.

Probably I take this sort of thing too personally, but over the past 2-3
years, I've spent thousand of hours of my life on this startup[2], sacrificed
untold hours of doing "fun" stuff, spending time with family and friends,
going on dates, or really have any life at all outside of the startup. And
while the financial expenditure hasn't been huge, I've spend several thousand
dollars out of my pocket on resources for the startup. But because I still
work some as a consultant, I'm not taking any risk and am not "a real
entrepreneur"? Yeah, kiss my ass.

That said, I'm a fan of Mark Suster and his work, and if we were raising money
and I had the chance to take an investment from Mark, I'd be inclined to do
it. I don't mean "kiss my ass" as a personal attack here, I just mean that I'm
calling bullshit on the idea that you're not a "real" entrepreneur just
because you haven't quit your job (yet).

[1]:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entrepreneurship](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entrepreneurship)

[2]: [http://www.fogbeam.com](http://www.fogbeam.com)

