What It Means to Be an Entrepreneur

The Modern Entrepreneur

An entrepreneur is a person who solves problems. That has been true since the beginning of commercialism. Entrepreneurs orchestrate resources to achieve that mission. It takes a certain amount of influence to gather those resources and to get them to do what is needed. That’s why most modern day entrepreneurs are very charismatic. Of course, charisma alone cannot carry the business, so a competent skill set must also be there either in a partner or in the same person.

Technology & the Entrepreneurship

Technology has generated and inspired many entrepreneurs. The Internet gave birth to many wildly successful companies. Google minted a new industry. The iPhone carved a path for many to become practically overnight millionaires. Many people are now looking for the next leap in technology or innovative platform to build their fortunes on.

Virtual or augmented reality are far from mainstream adoption but is getting closer by the day and is an inevitable pillar of technology’s future. Self-driving cars and trucks are already being tested. Widely available high speed satellite Internet is looking to be a real possibility. Voice assistants are already pervading millions of homes.

These technological advances create opportunities for individuals that have the influence (money, charisma, audience, or all of the above) and competence to generate a successful business.

Entrepreneur’s Traits

Entrepreneurship is all about taking risk with tolerance for failure. Most researches have shown that entrepreneurs are born rather than made. They have some of the distinctive characteristics that made them successful in their decisions. Few traits of successful entrepreneurs are mentioned below:

• Risk takers
• Innovative
• Creative
• Decision makers
• Work well under pressure
• Passionate
• Self-motivated
• Self-driven
• Future oriented
• Proactive
• Having strong vision
• Leadership skills
• Interpersonal skills
• Communication skills

Successful entrepreneur possesses some or all of these qualities.

Successes and Failures

There are thousands of great examples of successful entrepreneurs and millions of examples of failed entrepreneurs. Most of the time, there is quite a big overlap!

Jan Koum created the world’s biggest mobile messaging system called WhatsApp. He recognized that the launch of iPhone and its App Store would create a tremendous opportunity. While the app wasn’t successful at first, through improvements in the iPhone and in the app itself, it became very popular and sold to Facebook for $19 billion.

Hari Ravichandran created Endurance in the late 90s by recognizing that businesses wanted to get their websites online. He built it into the web hosting juggernaut it is today with over $1 billion is revenue. He has since gone on to found a cybersecurity venture and philanthropic organizations.

Risks in Entrepreneurship

There are big risks that every entrepreneur has to face in order to become successful. They have to take loans, spend their savings, sacrifice their career, finances, their time, personal commitments and much more. If you don’t have a stomach for stress, you may not be cut out for a career in entrepreneurship.

Conclusion

Entrepreneurship has been painted as a sexy rags-to-riches endeavour and for some lucky ones that is true. But for most, it ends in failure even if they are charismatic, have the resources, and have a great business plan. Nothing is guaranteed, but you can give yourself the best chance possible. And it helps to know that even jobs are not guaranteed – in fact, nothing in life is guaranteed so why not do what you love? Whether that be entrepreneurship or something else, as Steve  Jobs said, “Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”