“If you weren’t ready you wouldn’t have the opportunity, if you weren’t capable you wouldn’t have the desire.”

Not everyone is suited to entrepreneurship, but if you naturally find it interesting then it might be a sign that you should build something of your own.
Entrepreneurship is an exciting, volatile field, one that is often misunderstood by those on the sidelines.
If you’re like I was in 2010; on the sidelines but very curious, then this overview might offer a clearer perspective.

Everything You’ve Heard About Entrepreneurship Is True

Except, it’s not all true for everyone all the time.
People have made billions, people have lost their houses, people have created freedom for their families and people have worked themselves into burnout or divorce.
People have made great use of automation and technology to do more than ever before, and people have started old-school, low-tech businesses that are profitable and popular.
Entrepreneurship is uncertain and volatile, without the safety net of a reliable career at a large company, and also those large companies are no longer offering safety or job security.
Entrepreneurship does not require a laborious “piece of paper” that permits you to do the work, and there’s no guarantee that the university you attended will make your company a success – all that matters is that you do the work and find ways to keep going.
It is flawed and it is beautiful.
There are drawbacks and challenges, and a lot of entrepreneurs look at them and go “I can live with these if it means I can do something meaningful/lucrative/exciting”.

Interestingly, SOME of entrepreneurship can be taught.
You can learn how to identify good markets, how to test and prototype ideas, how to structure a launch, how to read your own financials, or how to pitch to investors.
What our industry struggles to teach is hunger, drive, enthusiasm, resilience and empathy.
You have to bring those to the table, or discover them along the way.

Entrepreneurship Is Fascinating

This might sound like an odd attribute to highlight, and it’s both a positive and a negative, but entrepreneurship is full of drama.
There’s pressure and there’s tension – if you don’t start making money or can’t reach sustainability before your money runs out, it’s over.
There are several different directions every new business might go, and we are constantly surprised by who thrives and who folds.
There are constant plot twists, and if you’re in a dull corporate role you might see that as a benefit, because entrepreneurs aren’t often bored for long.

There is something captivating about how founders can seemingly create something out of nothing – a new idea, a new brand, a better/cheaper product or service that only exists because of their vision and hard work.
It feels like magic.
Like magic, however, it works because of the magician’s practice, preparation and sleight of hand.
Something can also become nothing equally quickly – 50% of new businesses close in their first year, 70% over two years and 90% over five years.
That doesn’t mean the founder disappears, they’re probably going to reload and come back with a new business idea.
Despite your fears, failure is not permanent, and 99.99% of people you meet will only hear the version of the story that you tell them.

Entrepreneurship is fascinating because you have skin in the game – the consequences of your actions (or inaction) directly benefit/punish you.
That skin in the game makes you interested in how your marketing is performing, or where you can cut corners to save money – you’re the one who benefits or suffers from these decisions, rather than working in service of a faceless, multi-billion dollar corporation.
An entrepreneur cannot afford to tune out from the workings of their business.
They are the main person responsible for keeping it afloat and turning it into a business they are proud of.
But interestingly, an entrepreneur can influence, not control the outcome.
You can make a lot of smart decisions and still lose, and you can fail forwards and end up making a lot of money through chance or meeting the right person at the right time.
That means it’s worth making an effort, but you won’t know how it’s going to pan out.

Entrepreneurship is also fascinating because it contains a jumbled microcosm of the entire business world, as well as other aspects of global life.
Startups can borrow mindsets, tricks and ideas from economics, politics, design, war, psychology, construction, people management, investing, and the rapidly changing state of today’s technology.
It’s a field that rewards generalists, and people who can see their situation through several different “lenses” at once.
Better yet, it’s a practical application of these fields – you learn about HR because you suddenly need to hire or fire someone, not because it’s a hobby of yours or because you thought a book on HR looked interesting.

We Are Looking For Gold

Entrepreneurship is like mining for gold – there are “better” and “worse” ways of doing it, but there’s also a decent degree of luck involved.
Some people discover gold nuggets in the wild, and these are valuable, but what we really want is signs that there’s a large gold deposit nearby, something we can mine for a long time.
This is a crucial difference between a startup and a small business; a startup is looking for a good opportunity to build a substantial company, well beyond what you can handle as a freelancer.
When it works, it’s extremely lucrative, but we can’t force it to work.
Either there’s gold in them there hills or there isn’t.
And then the question becomes: do we have a way of getting that gold out that makes us a profit?
If it costs you $10 to mine $6 worth of gold, growth will send you broke.
Some entrepreneurs will look at that and say “we should look for a gold deposit that’s easier to access”, and some will say “we should raise money for a bigger mine, so that our costs drop to $4 for every $6 worth of gold”.
Both are valid, and make up two of the main worldviews you’ll encounter in the startup world – the bootstrappers and the venture capitalists.

Bootstrapping vs Venture Capital

Entrepreneurship has a lot of core ideas and cliches, like when you hear people talking about “running lean” or “pivoting”, but then there are two slightly different camps.
This is important because you’ll hear a lot of conflicting advice, and it can give you whiplash.
Both groups have a solid case, but each approach works best for certain industries or situations.

Some people encourage entrepreneurs to be smart with their money, using the money they get from their early customers to sustain their business, and not to take on debt.
They believe that entrepreneurs need to be self-sufficient, and this hunger forces you to be a better designer, better salesperson and better money-manager.
They believe in growing at a sustainable pace, working hard and keeping control of your company.
This is known as “bootstrapping”, from the (physically impossible) expression “pull yourself up by your bootstraps”.

Some people encourage entrepreneurs to find an opportunity and quickly grow a big company that can form a monopoly position, and the way to do that is by bringing on investors.
By taking an investor’s money, you can fuel massive growth, reaching economies of scale, and outpacing your competitors.
They believe that it’s better to own a smaller piece of a much larger pie, than owning all of a small pie.
This only works on ideas that have huge potential and strong evidence, and investors will ask lots of tricky questions, but then you get their support, money and access to other valuable people.
This is known as creating a “venture backable” business, the sort of company that investors love.

In some cases, one option might be totally inappropriate or inaccessible to you.
You probably won’t bootstrap a new smartphone company, and you probably don’t need to raise investment for your new t-shirt company.
Sometimes you might shift from bootstrapping to bringing on venture capital.
To use our earlier example, a gold prospector might go searching for gold, find a few nuggets around a mountain, then take these to investors as evidence of real potential.
They needed that hard-earned evidence to be persuasive, and now need a decent amount of money for their gold mine.
Each camp believes in what they’re telling you, and neither of them are perfect methodologies.
Our advice is to listen to lots of advice, then focus on what matches your specific scenario.
Don’t be put off because your idea fits better in one category or the other, this is just to explain the different worldviews, so you know why you’re hearing certain advice.

Swimming With The Sharks

Perhaps a better aim is to design a company that could go on Shark Tank and impress the Sharks, even if you don’t want or need their money.
You want a company that makes sense to smart people – they see the benefits of your ideas, they believe that you have a decent market, they aren’t worried that a competitor will overtake you tomorrow, and they have some ideas for your future development.
It’s very hard to build a business like this by accident, it happens by intentional design, iteration and a lot of work, but it is do-able.
This is the basis of most good startup programs – to help you ask those Shark Tank questions along the way, guiding you towards good opportunities without falling into the traps of fear and overconfidence.

It’s hard to be what you can’t see, so we want to find a collection of different entrepreneurs and brands that have done things in what you consider to be the right way.
Who inspires you?
Who made a bold move or a clever change that set them up for success?
Who humbly cut their losses and changed to a different approach?
What brands or companies do you like, and what specifically appeals to you?
Don’t idolise startups or entrepreneurs, but if you can spot patterns in what you like and dislike, it can show you about yourself and what you’d like to build.

By inviting good questions early and throughout the process, you can make adjustments to your business model with the smallest amounts of pain.
Don’t run from good questions.

Entrepreneurship Has An Open Door

One fundamental difference between the startup and corporate worlds is the lack of gatekeepers.
A startup founder is not waiting for someone to “pick them”, they are not applying alongside 100 other candidates, and they do not need a special qualification to make a start.
They are instead picking themselves for the work, putting up their hand and starting to take action.
The door is open, but the work is hard.
Some people still have advantages and head-starts, but nobody is blocked from creating an idea and picking themselves to build it out.

That open door has another side to it – you can get knocked back out in turbulent times.
There’s no boss to check up on you, no mandatory professional development process, no redeployment onto another thriving project when this one is complete.
But at least you can’t be fired by one person, you can only be fired by a whole lot of your customers saying no, not one grumpy boss or corporate restructure.
Again, entrepreneurs weigh up these pros and cons and say “I can live with these drawbacks”, just go into it with your eyes open.
No one is guaranteed success, but everyone is invited to have a go.

An Invitation (That You Really Don’t Need)

In the moment right before a person leaps into entrepreneurship, they’ll probably hear a worried voice trying to talk them out of it.
The worried voice might come from within themselves, or from a family member, or a work colleague.
It usually takes the form of someone “trying to keep you safe” and avoiding an expensive or embarrassing mistake.
It can also be a jealous voice, again from family, friends or sour acquaintances.
The jealous voice asks “who do they think they are?”, and is unhappy to see you building something that might succeed.
The jealous ones have a suspicion, deep down, that this actually might be a good move, and that it will probably go well, and they hate that they’re not doing it themselves.

Now, in a level-headed state, you and I both know that entrepreneurship does not need to be expensive, failure does not need to be embarrassing, and that you don’t need an invitation.
But for those moments late at night, or when something spooks you and sends you down a path of self-doubt, I’m going to be the Andy Wang (above) and consider this a formal invitation:
Please build something, even something super niche.
Please start the process, even though you don’t know where it will lead.
Please take up an internship in the world of entrepreneurship, trying lots of things.
Please start a side hustle, don’t quit your day job straight away.
Please take a job in a startup, learn while you earn.
Please lurk around the edges while you get comfortable, or dive straight in.

If you are unsure of where to start, here are three good suggestions that are completely within your reach:

Create your own education, reading books or following channels of smart people whose styles resonates with you.
Try a wide range and double down on the ones that light you up, they are clues about who you are as a learner as well as a founder.
Pick a project, almost any project, and make progress on it in secret.
It does not need revenue tomorrow, but you have to stick with it for a weirdly long time.
Build the muscles of being a maker, doing the work even when you don’t feel like it.
Look for the good people in business, either in your industry or in your town or both.
This is not “look for the successful people” or “look for the powerful people”, they can put you off.
Find the good people because they will help you to keep going, and they usually know other good people who can be helpful in your development.
Good people will not slam doors on you or make you want to quit.

None of these require you to have a billion-dollar idea, none of these are expensive, none of these involve any danger.
They are all uncomfortable and open ended, requiring discipline and emotional labour, and none of them are “get rich quick” schemes.
Put in the work, make something of your own, join a good community, and don’t talk about it for six months.
This advice will inspire the right people and put off the wrong people.

Only spend the money you can afford.
That might mean getting or keeping a job before/while building a business.
Please don’t go into debt for a high-priced course, or spend lots of money trying to make your new company look “legit”.
Stagger your commitment until you see evidence of real customers and real demand, don’t rush because you feel like you’re running out of time.

Thanks for considering entrepreneurship, our industry needs more good people who want to build great things.
You have the opportunity, you have the desire, and all the reasons for not doing it are terrible.
If you’d like some help along the way, you can find resources here, join a startup program in your local area, or work with a business coach to make your business stronger.

Welcome To Entrepreneurship