Are You an Entrepreneur?

My friend Fred Wilson blogged that a venture capitalist’s favorite sight coming into the office is a serial entrepreneur.  Actually the term is redundant since entrepreneuritis is both chronic and incurable.

People sometimes ask me if they should become entrepreneurs.  The answer is “no”, not because it isn’t fun to be an entrepreneur and sometimes even profitable but because you can’t “become” an entrepreneur.  You either are or you aren’t.  You can’t unbecome one either.  I’m personally engaged in an experiment to see whether entrepreneurs can retire but there is no control group so the results will be suspect either way.

Here in late night talk show format are the ten ways to know if you (or a loved one) is an entrepreneur.

10.    You can’t bring yourself to call anyone “boss”.

9.      You or any of your children can incorporate a business in your state in less than four hours.

8.      Instead of saying “there oughtta be a law”, you say “there could be a business…”

7.      You can’t stand to lose.

6.      You can survive losing.

5.      Some of your favorite people are VCs (condition applies only after obtaining at least one round of VC funding).

4.      Some of your least favorite people are VCs (condition applies only after ATTEMPTING to obtain at least one round of VC funding).

3.      You are most likely to start a new business immediately after thinking in the shower.

2.      You have to take two zeros OFF the numbers in your business plan or no one will believe it.

1.        You didn’t read this list because you already know what you are (and you don’t have time to read lists).

This post is available as a podcast.

If you are an entrepreneur, you may want to learn from some of my mistakes:

Starting as a sole practitioner;

The first employees;

The power of silence in negotiation;

Sales 101.

Comments

[Basil]

There is Nothing that can compare to owning your own business(es). Controlling your own future... Now that's powerful!!!

[reader]

I just skipped down to #1, and figured hey, why not take his word for it... so I didn't read anything else.

[Klas K.]

The reason why I am an entrepreneur is because I have to. Working in a large organization does not make sense. There is simply not enough room for creativity and there´s too much politics. What I love about being an entrepreneur is that there is a focus on creation.

Klas

[Andrew Hansen]

Damn, now I have to build a showerproof Skype wireless bluetooth device...

Anyone have any good manufacturing partners in China...

:)

[Andrew Hansen]

I have been trying to find a showerproof wireless Skype Bluetooth device, so I can get the the root ideas in the pipeline before I evolve them to far, the timeframe is tight, basically before my hair dries.

[OG]

Chris: turn that problem into a business

[Jack Krupansky]

I even read down to #1 on your list, but that's because I'm a VC - Venture Commenter.

-- Jack Krupansky

[Chris Yeh]

Actually, I find that the key moments for coming up with business ideas are walking the dog and giving my baby daughter a bottle.

It's ironic that the less time I have, the more ideas I get! In the old days, I used to complain about not having any good ideas. Now I have a new idea per week, but are so busy with existing projects that I have no time to pursue them.

--Chris