You Might Be an Entrepreneur If You Meet These 3 Conditions
I’m a recent convert to the lean startup movement. But after four
years of operating a small startup incubator at a private liberal arts
college I've learned a lot about creating business models that work and
who might become a successful entrepreneur. It’s not about having access
to capital or area of study.
1. The right skills.
Marketing innovation. As Michael Ellsberg wrote in The Education of Millionaires, the prerequisite to selling is listening.
It's important to understand people and their needs, build networks and
relationships and create unique solutions to pitch effectively.
Managing risk. Entrepreneurs aren’t risk takers as
much as they're risk minimizers. One way to minimize risk is to
bootstrap: Provide the resources for a startup with customer revenues.
Another way is to follow the advice of Eric Ries, pioneer of the lean startup movement, proponent of the “build-measure-learn” mantra.
Test all business model assumptions, ranging from the notion of the
customer problem to the hypothosized revenue stream. Startup expert Ash Maurya wrote in Running Lean that the job of entrepreneurs is to find a business model that works before running out of money.
Leading oneself and others. Entrepreneurs keep going
when others stop trying. They overcome seemingly insurmountable
obstacles. They build tribes. They transcend the status quo, form new
relationships and patterns of behavior and bring change where it's
sometimes unwanted.
Having experienced the process, entrepreneurs quickly adapt and
confidently try new things. And things don’t always go as planned.
Entrepreneurs, like leaders in the “fundamental state,” a term coined by Robert Quinn in Building the Bridge As You Walk Across It, have the “adaptive confidence,” “detached interdependence” and “grounded vision” to figure things out.
2. The right process.
Entrepreneurship is a discipline. Peter Drucker, sometimes called the "inventor of management," argued that entrepreneurship is a management discipline. It’s a process that can be learned and applied.
Discipline implies a process. Entrepreneur and educator, Steve Blank, outlined the customer development process in The Four Steps to the Epiphany,
which was validated and further refined by Maurya and Ries for their
own startups (Spark59 and IMVU, respectively). The process begins
with customer discovery or understanding problems from
consumers' perspective and testing whether the entrepreneur’s solution
fits.
Then there's customer validation or determining how, when
and where customers (the market) and the entrepreneur’s solution (the
product) meet and value can be exchanged. And customer creation entails
discovering how to entice the next wave of customers to move en masse
toward the sales channel. Then and only then should resources be spent
to build a company to support the business model.
That last step is called company creation. Before I became a lean
startup convert, I used to ask students to do the company creation step
first. They wrote long business plans outlining the structure of their
company before any of them knew or had tested if they had a business
model that worked. How wrong I was. And how much student time and
resources I wasted!
3. The right heart.
Love of the game. It takes much trial and error to
find a business model that works. If a businessperson doesn’t love the
process, he’ll lose energy not only before running out of money but
also before it's even the right time to ask for money.
Commitment. So what determines if entrepreneurs keep
going? Love, like skill, involves both nature and nurture. It entails
affection, passion and discipline. It requires both the heart and head.
As is the case in a marriage, a commitment to putting others first is
needed for getting through the tough times. The entrepreneur should
find ways to complement others' skills and invite them to complement
hers. Entrepreneurship is one of the ultimate team sports. >>>
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