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Who is an entrepreneur? I can hear all of you saying, Duh! That’s easy! Really? Go on, tell me, who is an entrepreneur? Well, an entrepreneur is someone who is his own boss. Is that right? A plumber who works for himself, is he an entrepreneur? No! Well, an entrepreneur takes risks. Participants on Fear Factor, the reality show on AXN, also take many risks. Are they entrepreneurs? No! An entrepreneur is the owner of his business. Steve Ballmer does not own Microsoft. Would you say he is not an entrepreneur? No! An entrepreneur cannot be fired from his job. Steve Jobs was fired from Apple, no? An entrepreneur becomes a millionaire. Anand Kumar, who runs the highly successful Super 30 in Patna, is nowhere near being a millionaire. Is he not an entrepreneur? Now, it’s my turn to say duh!

This brings us back to my question. Who is an entrepreneur? Well, an entrepreneur is a new species. Wait, maybe not. Darwin spoke of him when he said the fittest survive. Entrepreneurs are the fittest. They survive negative bank balances, peer pressure, family opposition, opportunity loss when they give up cushy jobs, and failure. And, like the proverbial phoenix, they rise from the ashes, dusting themselves up, smile on their lips, steely resolve in their eyes, and song in their heart.

Being an entrepreneur is a state of mind. Which means you are a ‘differently-abled’ thinker. Does this mean Einstein was an entrepreneur? No, because he only ‘thought’. He did not do anything to take his ‘thoughts’ to the market. So, an entrepreneur is one who is a thinker-doer. A mentee of ours figured that when people want to buy laptops, smartphones, digicams, there is no ‘go to’ place that facilitates an informed buying decision. So he not only ‘thought’ a portal like his was a good idea; he also went ahead, created the product, and took it to the market. Being an entrepreneur is an attitude. It is an attitude that says: I don’t like the way things are in my world, I have the power to change them, so I will change them to make my world a better place! A mentee of ours said, I don’t like the way my family treats me, just because I’m illiterate. I want to see respect for me in their eyes, so I will become an entrepreneur! In the last three years, she has built a business which has a turnover of Rs.20 crore! Do her family members respect her now? You bet!

So, if being an entrepreneur is a state of mind, an attitude, is it necessary to be the owner of business? Not at all. You could be working for a Microsoft or an Oracle and still think entrepreneurially.
You may not have brought capital to the table, hence you don’t own the business but if you think and behave as if you do, in the sense that you take ownership of the road map, you can proudly wear a dog-tag that says ‘world’s best employee’!

Now, let me answer my own question. Who is an entrepreneur? An entrepreneur is a person who wants to leave a footprint in society. He wants to transform lives. He wants to create meaning such that even people who don’t know him will shed a tear when’s he’s gone. He is so focused on the meaning that nothing fazes him, not the mundane rigor of getting the idea off the drawing board into the marketplace. The only thing that drives him is the goal and the goal lays the road he makes.
An entrepreneur is someone who invented the phrase: I can.

NANDINI VAIDYANATHAN teaches entrepreneurship in biz schools around the world and has co-founded two companies, Startups (forstartups.blogspot.com) and CARMa (www.carmagroup.in), both of which mentor entrepreneurs.

©Entrepreneur July 2011

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business, entrepreneur, Nandini Vaidyanathan, owner