Entrepreneur

Executive Summary:

The article seeks to answer the following questions:

1. What really makes an entrepreneur?

2. What Characteristics set successful entrepreneurs apart, enabling them to start ventures against all odds and keep them alive even in the worst of times?

3. Do you have those characteristics, and if you don’t can you develop them?

Major Takeaways:

• Winning entrepreneurs are passionate enough about their ideas to assume enormous personal risks, powerful enemies, bankruptcy, even jail to realize their dreams. However grand their visions, they are ready to start small and patiently scrabble in the mud for any deal they can swing. Profoundly opportunistic, they will do whatever it takes to win the confidence of their customers and investors, knowing that simply staying in business is the only thing that matters.

• The author lists five questions as a litmus test for the potential entrepreneur:

1. Are you comfortable stretching the rules? Entrepreneurs revel in bending the rules. Most start-ups success stories contain at least one episode of an audacious entrepreneur using outrageous tactics to swing a crucial deal or find the resources to get an idea off of the drawing board:

Example: Article give the example of two entrepreneurs who were funded by VC’s and needed to get high caliber marketing talent. They had nothing more than their home offices and cell phones, so they took out a full-page ad in the paper touting themselves as a “fast growing multinational company,” and rented a plush suite at the four seasons to conduct interviews. They got 1,000 applications, picked the best, and grew their company to 600 people, while became a fast-growing multi-national concern in ~10 yrs.

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