| A lot of the more successful entrepreneurs I know operate a lot like Elon Musk. The basic model seems to be to: * Start a project in spare time * Validate technology (prototype something) * Validate market demand (talk to customers) * Validate business model (estimate costs/revenues/etc.) * Otherwise mitigate risk as appropriate for the business Most of these are pretty deep dives; it's not a one-evening project. In most cases, people (like Elon) become minor domain experts. On the other hand, these are also not job-quitting deep dives; one isn't on the street if one fails. Perhaps for every few dozen such deep dives, something which looks really plausible comes up. From that point, it's largely a matter of good execution. I think the key difference between my friends and Elon is that Elon tries to do Really Big Things which change the world. My friends might start a business which e.g. applies machine vision to a new vertical, or adds some kind of automation to some industrial process, or similar. At this point, all have lives, families, etc. and aren't working 70+ hour weeks. Failure rates for their businesses aren't all too high either. Most business they start seem to at least pay the bills for the boss and the employees (with a few much bigger successes, and a few failures). I'm not saying that's most folks, but that is most folks in my community. But they've universally managed people before, they can code well, they can do math well, they've built out a reasonable network of contacts, etc. |