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PS: We can of course disagree on this, and that doesn't make your or my opinion any less, but just thought I'd restate in case I was unclear. Sure, I don't even think we disagree about much. I'm really just quibbling about terminology, and - as you mentioned - people are constantly arguing about the exact definition of terms like "entrepreneur" and "startup" etc. I will just add that I haven't met a lot of the kind of people you talk about here: I think there definitely are "startup founders" who are not entrepreneurs. They are looking for a job that happens to be CEO of their own startup, rather than to create a business that meets a need and makes some money. which may come down to geography, or maybe I do meet those people but they don't register because I mentally filter them out very quickly, or whatever. But now that you word it that way, I can see how you could reasonably talk about a "startup founder" who isn't really an entrepreneur. As a person, I myself was certainly a "startup founder" on my first two startups, as I considered myself a startup founder and entrepreneurial but I actually had zero clue about how to create a business. I know the feeling. Before I read The Art of the Start and The Four Steps to the Epiphany I had only the very, very vaguest of notions of exactly how to go from "I have an idea" to "I have a business". Luckily, between those books, and a lot of great articles linked here at HN (and very pointedly, a lot of yours, swombat!) I think I now have a reasonable idea of what it takes to turn the idea into a business. Now, we might still fail for any number of reasons, but at least we're not just stumbling around in the dark. And, for what it's worth, we are currently going with the bootstrapped, "try to be profitable as as early as possible" model. These days, I try to frame most of my decision making in terms of "What is the most important thing I can do right now, in terms of getting to revenue"? (And no, posting here isn't contributing much to that goal, but everybody needs an outlet of some sort now and then, besides work!) |