My message for the New Year is this: we need to bring back real entrepreneurship. What is it, and how can we do that?
Austrian political economist Joseph Schumpeter said that entrepreneurship is the driving force of an economy. I’m a big believer in the Austrian School of Economics because, in the Austrian School, it is the entrepreneur, not the government, who is at the center of the economy.
An entrepreneur is an individual willing to risk their own money. The risk factor is crucial for an entrepreneur. The entrepreneur lays out and raises the initial investment in a business, but the hard risk is to remain in business. Both risks have their complexities.
Discounting Wisdom and Experience
The whole venture startup financing scenery is removing the real entrepreneurial approach. I recently read that one of today’s prominent billionaire investors will only invest in companies when the main idea person is under 30 years old. What does that approach imply? Wisdom and experience don’t count. I believe this viewpoint is incorrect, and I regret that people with that belief sit in the driver’s seat. At the end of the day, it is wisdom and knowledge that a business needs. It is the experience that it requires.
With age and experience, a person has, much of the time, learned through failures. Failures, though, also happen through a lack of experience, and people should also learn from more experienced people.
Risk and Responsibility
Up to 90 percent of startups fail, so it, in fact, is a real risk. “Risk-free” doesn’t exist in life. But today, I see an increasing number of people attempting to live risk-free. They require some kind of insurance for everything they do. These “risk-free” people count on someone else to invest the money to assume the risk.
When people aren’t investing their own risk but count on someone else’s, they take far less responsibility for the enterprise. An analogy could be made to rented cars. When someone rents a car, they take little to no responsibility. Look at the condition of a car that has been in a rental agency for two years and compare it to one that has been privately owned for the same period. You’ll find the rental has experienced far more abuse.
It’s almost like gambling entrepreneurship. “If the idea doesn’t work out, it’s not my money. I’m only 27, I’m not losing anything. I got paid, I gained some experience, and now I move on.” They would certainly not have that attitude if they had ventured their own money. They wouldn’t gamble. They would care for it. They would use metrics to monitor the risk factors.
Ownership has to do not only with responsibility but also with a learning curve. That learning curve comes about through experience, which can include failure. But failure brings with it new experiences.
Experience is also a vital part of learning management. Management cannot be learned simply from reading a book. I know because, this coming year, I will have two people in my company who have been with me for twenty years and a lot more who have been with me for 10. I have learned to manage, and they are still with me.
Investor Manipulation
To me, investing in a company where the CEO is under 30 years old is creating an unhealthy form of codependency. In such a case, the investor can easily manipulate the enterprise in which they’ve invested because they have more experience and control the money. They can say something like, “The business needs to expand, but you don’t have the money to do so. Therefore, we will invest, but will increase our equity. Your equity will be diluted, you will have less power and fewer voting rights.”
A few young entrepreneurs manage to hold the line and say, “That’s fine, you can invest more, but my equity and voting rights remain the same.” Most, however, lose out.
We Need Patience
At the beginning of this new year, I would like to impart the message that we need patience. There would be many more healthy organizations and services if we were a little more patient. The impatient person is much more vulnerable than the patient person.
When you are patient, you know some things have not worked out as you want, but it’s not the end. There is always another opportunity.
In so many ways, patience leads to wisdom. Wisdom is a sorely missing factor today. Wisdom comes with age and experience.
Real Entrepreneurship
I vote for real entrepreneurship. Where does real entrepreneurship come from? It comes from a real need being fulfilled with a solution.
Real entrepreneurs are needed to solve some of the insane problems we have today. Currently, we have too many bad solutions. We have unhealthy food, unhealthy energy, unhealthy immigration, unhealthy health care, and unhealthy political situations, resulting in a war-torn world.
We have many options and opportunities to make the world a better place. Let’s stop falling into traps to “get rich quick” while we collapse businesses. This is not the route to actual experience and wisdom.
Bring back real entrepreneurship!
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