January 14th, 2011 → 1:30 pm @ Norman // No Comments
One of my team came to me today and said, “I’m sick of working with people who are not entrepreneurial.” I laughed. My team are free to engage with whomever they like, as long as the start-up company fulfils certain criteria (large market opportunity, differentiated offering, ethically sound, etc). Some team members prefer to work with entrepreneurial founders, while others are more interested in the technology.
I laughed because I had given up working with non-entrepreneurial founders some time ago. I’d realised that, while I’d had a great time building companies with other entrepreneurs, working with technology-focused founders was just hard work. The entrepreneurs generate an energy which both boosts my own energy and feeds off my inputs. Sure, they also create chaos as they drive ahead more quickly than they should, but it’s a good, productive chaos full of blind alleys, quick fixes, and rapidly ticked-off milestones. It’s great being in a world of possibilities and opportunities, where optimism rules.
The technology founders, meanwhile, dither around with well-structured processes, endless meetings, and never-ready-to-launch products. They see building a business as “problem-solving”, and they suck the life out of me… correction… they USED to suck the life out of me. Now I choose to work only with the entrepreneurs… and I’m having fun. It looks like another member of my team is joining me!
Tags: entrepreneur, start-up, startup
