
The #1 most important personality trait of an entrepreneur - webwatch
http://www.16thletter.com/2008/02/22/the-1-most-important-personality-trait-of-an-entrepreneur/
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trekker7
Over the last few months, one common trend I've seen on Hacker News is that
there are a lot of articles about characteristics of successful entrepreneurs,
or where to live if you want to succeed, or the ideas/implementation debate,
and so on. I think a lot of people (including me) are constantly trying to
reassure themselves that they have what it takes to succeed, by double-
checking if their own attributes are contained in the "must-have" checklist of
the day.

I think this is okay as far as academic learning and analysis goes. But a lot
of times (not in this post though) people get into flamewars about which
attributes will actually lead to success. If the "idea people" win out over
the "implementation camp", no shit, the hardcore programmers amongst us are
going to feel left out and start arguing for the opposite argument. If we say
Silicon Valley rules and everywhere else is sub-optimal, Europeans are going
to be pretty pissed.

But I think it's silly for anybody with attribute X to feel upset or left out
because the latest "attribute discussion" decided, by popular vote, that
attribute X will lead to failure. There is sufficient variation in attributes
amongst successful entrepreneurs, that you don't need to make any grand
changes in your lifestyle to succeed at this game. I.e. you don't need to
switch from being a programmer to an idea guy, or vice versa. You don't need
to move, or change industries, and so on.

I'm just saying that tons of people already have what it takes to be an
entrepreneur, and if they just think for themselves about what to do and
ignore all the external discussions, they have a pretty good chance of
succeeding.

~~~
prakash
Well said. 10 different entrepreneurs, will tell you 10 different things as
the #1 most important characteristic.

That article written by Tony Wright comes to mind:"Every Piece of Startup
Advice is a Lie (including mine)"

[http://www.tonywright.com/2008/every-piece-of-startup-
advice...](http://www.tonywright.com/2008/every-piece-of-startup-advice-is-a-
lie-including-mine/)

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alex_c
I have researched this extensively through blog posts and articles posted here
over the last year, and I have come to the conclusion that the #1 most
important personality trait of an entrepreneur is the ability to have
multiple, unrelated, and sometimes conflicting #1 most important personality
traits.

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jamesbritt
Indifference to lists describing the most important traits.

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edw519
Adaptability is obviously important, but I wouldn't put it at #1.

I would say "ability to take action".

It doesn't matter how smart, personable, determined, passionate, or adaptable
you are if you don't take action. Until you do, you have nothing.

~~~
wallflower
Luke asks: Shoe - in your opinion, whats the best resource (other than
shoemoney, of course) for affiliate noobies to learn how to get started and
what are the best offers to get started with (sorry, that’s sort of 2
questions in one)?

Thanks!

ShoeMoney: I really dunno any site including this one that will teach people
that much how to make money. They need to dive in and learn. Its so simple and
costs nothing to start that people need to stop being lazy. No website will
replace experience.

jim asks: Do you have a mentor? If so, who is it? If not, who would you love
to be mentored by?

Thanks Jeremy!

ShoeMoney: I don’t have a mentor but there are a lot of people I have taken
pieces from… seth godin, malcom gladwell, guy kawasaki. I am not a big fan of
“mentoring”. I think more people need to do things for themselves and learn
from there own experiences and not from the experiences of others.

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stcredzero
(If you think what's below is off topic, then make sure you've read the
article and be sure to read all of the comment.)

The Clancy Brothers are best known as a seminal Irish singing group, but they
started out as a troupe of actors that went to New York to become famous by
putting on works of Shakespeare. The folk music craze was in full force, and
they noticed that they were actually making more money renting out their venue
to folkies than they were making by putting on shows, so they decided to get
into the act themselves. They pretty were much like other folks who emulated
the Weavers and other popular acts of the day, but since they happened to be
Irish, the songs they knew were Irish traditional songs, and so they stood out
and became international stars.

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dennykmiu
Having been a struggling entrepreneur for the last fifteen years and having my
share of spectacular failures and some occasional modest successes, I have
learned to live by one simple rule, Conservation of Single Malt Scotch, which
has served me well ... "If I don't drink too much on the way up, I don't need
to drink too much on the way down."

Like many who have been entrepreneurs, I have learned quickly that
entrepreneurship is the great equalizer. Everyone has an equal chance to
success and equal chance to failure, irrespective of their age, education,
family wealth and of course, cultural background and race.

In fact, the more that people tells us that it cannot be done or that it
should not be done, it seems that the more enjoyable is the journey.

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onlinesu
I think that the most important trait is perseverance. You may be willing to
change directions and adapt, but if you quit, you're done.

~~~
nickb
Completely agree. Courage to persevere when faced with adversity is what makes
or breaks people and companies. Change and adaptability is great but what if
it's a wrong direction?! Those who change directions whenever the wind changes
direction shift focus quickly and almost always don't get the prize. People
who change directions all the time are usually people who chase fads.

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kirubakaran
imho: #1 quality is "Burning desire to be an entrepreneur no matter what".

(definitely necessary. may be even sufficient.)

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huhtenberg
> _In her blog today, Penelope Trunk wrote that it really isn’t possible to
> know if your idea for a start-up is any good. I agree with her._

I think both of them are dead wrong.

Starting a company should come _after_ the idea is evaluated from as many
angles as possible and you have a confidence that the idea _is_ good. Based on
not just a gut feeling and a dream of being a founder, but on a research,
planning and a feedback.

In this light the adaptability is hardly a #1 trait, the rationality, the
sensibility and the patience are.

~~~
cstejerean
you can have a large degree of confidence that you idea is good, but you
cannot KNOW it is good until you build it.

~~~
huhtenberg
you cannot know _anything_ for sure before it happens

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ejs
These types of things always seem like saying that the key to being a good
runner is to have strong legs. While this is an important part, being a good
runner also depends on lung capacity and a whole host of other things.

To distill it all down to one thing seems a bit naive.

~~~
bridgetroll
Maybe naive and pointless, but it is "sound byte quality."

Like the myriad self-help/improvement programs that tout, "Do this and your
life will be better. Your truck will start, your girl will come back and
you'll find your dog..."

Oh wait, that's what happens when you play a country song backwards. That's
IT. The answer to being happy is to play country songs backwards. To which it
has been said that to every problem there is a solution that is correct,
easily understood and wrong.

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adityakothadiya
I have written extensively on this topic - What Makes Them Entrepreneurial
here -
[http://www.adeologue.com/adeologue/what_makes_them_entrepren...](http://www.adeologue.com/adeologue/what_makes_them_entrepreneurial/index.html)

One of the traits I have mentioned is this adaptability attribute -
[http://www.adeologue.com/adeologue/2007/07/what-makes-
them.h...](http://www.adeologue.com/adeologue/2007/07/what-makes-them.html)

I am still interviewing few successful entrepreneurs and understanding what
made them entrepreneurial. It's very important to learn these traits and
develop those.

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LPTS
I hate this shit. It's like the self help shit that always gets posted here.
Just a complete waste of time for all you aspiring entrepreneurs. This
linkbait crap is to truth about entrepreneurship as Brittany Spears scabby
anal warts are to beauty.

To someone knowledgeable on Asperger's syndrome (not knowledgeable in a saw it
on slashdot and in Wired once way and think I'm an expert way, but
knowledgeable in a could diagnose it accurately and debate the merits of the
different diagnostic methods way), the different shit that ends up on all
these different lists are all obviously related to Asperger's, in that they
are positive aspects of the syndrome. Further, most or all of the people on
PG's list of hero's clearly have strong elements of Asperger's or High
Functioning Autism in their biography. Being a risk taking perfectionist with
little to no desire for close family relations and an obsessive attention to
small details, along with hyperlexia and extraordinary memory, is both the
profile of an entrepreneur and aspergers syndrome. Further, one of the unique
cognitive capacities of certain Asperger's people is an ability to synthesize
original insights from diverse sources of seemingly unrelated information.

The character trait that Melissa describes is good to have. But, it's better
and more fully understood as the atheoretic oreintation certain
philosophically inclined people with Asperger's tend to demonstrate, than as a
trait that can be considered in isolation.

If I was running a VC shop or a start-up hub, I would make damn sure to ignore
shit like this, and instead read the book called The Genesis of Artistic
Creativity. I'd make all the employees read it too, and then find ways to
recruit people with desirable constellations of those traits, which are what
people are actually but blindly talking about (without getting to the heart of
it) with these psychologically unsophisticated linkbait analysis. In fact,
everyone who takes links like this seriously should stop and read that book
instead.

[http://www.amazon.com/Genesis-Artistic-Creativity-
Aspergers-...](http://www.amazon.com/Genesis-Artistic-Creativity-Aspergers-
Syndrome/dp/1843103346)

