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Who becomes an entrepreneur? Insights from research studies

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Re: Who becomes an entrepreneur? Insights from research studies

#71

Post by gareth_untether »

prakhar897 wrote: post #68
dagorenouf wrote: post #61

I left a 6 figure engineering job to build my own startup with my wife. For the past 5 years, we spent 2/3rds of our savings on it and almost didn’t take vacation. This year we finally reached ramen profitability. When I look at where we would be if I had kept the job, we would be homeowners, be able to buy new clothes regularly, go to restaurants and take awesome vacations a few times a year. But the missing thing w…

It's a logo generating site. Can you tell us why it took 5 years for 2 people to make?

It took then that long to make it profitable. Big difference making something and making it profitable.

Re: Who becomes an entrepreneur? Insights from research studies

#72

Post by seattle_spring »

prakhar897 wrote: post #68
dagorenouf wrote: post #61

I left a 6 figure engineering job to build my own startup with my wife. For the past 5 years, we spent 2/3rds of our savings on it and almost didn’t take vacation. This year we finally reached ramen profitability. When I look at where we would be if I had kept the job, we would be homeowners, be able to buy new clothes regularly, go to restaurants and take awesome vacations a few times a year. But the missing thing w…

It's a logo generating site. Can you tell us why it took 5 years for 2 people to make?

"I could build one of those in a weekend!"

Re: Who becomes an entrepreneur? Insights from research studies

#73

Post by quadcore »

I havent read it all but it doesnt seem to be about entrepreneurs but about innovators. Big difference. If I had to guess, innovators must be misfits whereas entrepreneurs must rather be fiting. So they dont make bombs in kindergarten, they win the class elections.

Re: Who becomes an entrepreneur? Insights from research studies

#75

Post by 4gotunameagain »

seattle_spring wrote: post #72
prakhar897 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a logo generating site. Can you tell us why it took 5 years for 2 people to make?

"I could build one of those in a weekend!"

I mean, between a weekend and 10 man-years there is kind of an inbetween.

Re: Who becomes an entrepreneur? Insights from research studies

#76

Post by peterjancelis »

My experience: Psychological orphans with a basic income.

"Psychological orphans" i.e. kids who had shitty parents and learned to adapt to survive. Then this behavior became a habit and a game.

"Basic income" i.e. kids from middle and upper middle class backgrounds so there was no food poverty in the family and long term thinking was possible by the kid, even in the context of the dysfunctional setting.

The above is true for me and all of the high growth tech founders I know on a very personal level (could be selection bias in who I connect deeply with though).

Re: Who becomes an entrepreneur? Insights from research studies

#77

Post by dagorenouf »

prakhar897 wrote: post #68
dagorenouf wrote: post #61

I left a 6 figure engineering job to build my own startup with my wife. For the past 5 years, we spent 2/3rds of our savings on it and almost didn’t take vacation. This year we finally reached ramen profitability. When I look at where we would be if I had kept the job, we would be homeowners, be able to buy new clothes regularly, go to restaurants and take awesome vacations a few times a year. But the missing thing w…

It's a logo generating site. Can you tell us why it took 5 years for 2 people to make?

On the building side of things, the main challenge is designing all the logos, my wife designed more than 800 so far. (almost every other logo generator site use existing icon libraries)

It took a bit more than a year to have enough logos to launch, design the product and code the platform. In part because we were such perfectionists (which we aren't as much anymore).

But launching was only the beginning, and soon the real challenge presented itself: how to find customers. Had to figure out a distribution and marketing strategy which we had no experience with, all the while improving the product. And this is why it's now been 5 years.

Re: Who becomes an entrepreneur? Insights from research studies

#78

Post by dagorenouf »

katsura wrote: post #69
dagorenouf wrote: post #61

I left a 6 figure engineering job to build my own startup with my wife. For the past 5 years, we spent 2/3rds of our savings on it and almost didn’t take vacation. This year we finally reached ramen profitability. When I look at where we would be if I had kept the job, we would be homeowners, be able to buy new clothes regularly, go to restaurants and take awesome vacations a few times a year. But the missing thing w…

I've been following you for quite some time now, and I really appreciate the honesty and the way you share both the ups and downs of running your own small business.

thank you, this means a lot!

Re: Who becomes an entrepreneur? Insights from research studies

#79

Post by svcphr »

In the US, inventors (not the same as entrepreneur, but often related) are also disproportionately likely to be immigrants

> We find immigrants represent 16 percent of all US inventors, but produced 23 percent of total innovation output, as measured by number of patents, patent citations, and the economic value of these patents. Immigrant inventors are more likely to rely on foreign technologies, to collaborate with foreign inventors, and to be cited in foreign markets, thus contributing to the importation and diffusion of ideas across borders.

https://www.nber.org/papers/w30797

Re: Who becomes an entrepreneur? Insights from research studies

#80

Post by throwaway290 »

Kye wrote: post #56
throwaway290 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Optimism is basically the same as poor risk assessment. Risk assessment, aka spending time analyzing everything that could go wrong ahead of time. Show me an optimist who does that and I will show you a pessimist. But the dominant trait at least for serial entrepreneurs might still be pessimism at the core, because it requires willingness to fail. You need to be pessimistic enough to expect to fail many times as a no…

This is the same kind of error people make when they assume an introvert must have poor social skills, even though that's often not the case. There's a meme/comic that goes like this: Panel 1, "Nothing really matters": a little creature in a void, sad. "What people think nihilism is." Panel 2, "Nothing really matters": the same creature surrounded by rainbows and puppies, happy. "What nihilism really is." In the same…

> I know there be dragons, and I'm going to date them all

I want to steal that quote. (Pessimistically I know I will forget it, so optimistically I'll try to have it printed on a T-shirt!)

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