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.