Entrepreneurship

The decision to become an entrepreneur, like any career decision, should not be made lightly. Business owners labor for long hours with no guarantee of success, and the best entrepreneurs pursue their business dreams fiercely and wholeheartedly despite the grueling effort and uncertainty involved. If you are considering this path, it may be helpful to consider whether you have the personality traits commonly exemplified by successful entrepreneurs.

A study performed by the Guardian Life Small Business Research Institute identified several traits that stood out among the most successful small-business entrepreneurs:

• Action-oriented: Top performing business owners are highly motivated to rise above the competition and work harder than their corporate adversaries. They tend to be less concerned than other small business owners about the overall state of the economy.
• Collaborative: Success-oriented small business owners understand how to delegate effectively to others within their business as well as build strong personal relationships with their management team, employees, consultants, vendors and customers. They are more committed to creating opportunities for others.
• Curious: Superior managers are always learning, reading trade publications and online material to discover new ways to improve their businesses, retain their employees, and innovate their products. They are never content with their current breadth of knowledge, and constantly wonder about what their competitors are doing.
• Future-focused: Successful entrepreneurs do not necessarily focus all of their efforts on speculative activities, but they do prudently prepare for the future, be it planning out their cash flows or designing their succession plans far in advance.
• Self-Fulfilled: Many people are attracted to the entrepreneurial mold, since they prefer the freedom of running a business over the regimentation of a corporate position. They value freedom so much over structure that they are willing to forgo the security of a corporate job for the control of an entrepreneur.
• Tech-Savvy: In a world driven by technological developments, entrepreneurs keep up with the latest advancements and incorporate technology into their ventures to make them more efficient.

Source: The Guardian Life Small Business Research Institute. “Six Dimensions that Characterize Success-Oriented Small Business Owners.” June 2010.

Silicon Valley entrepreneur and educator Steven Blank distinguishes between four types of entrepreneurs:

Small business entrepreneurs
comprise the majority of entrepreneurs in the United States. They run everything from grocery stores, salons and travel agencies, to internet commerce storefronts, plumbing companies and fashion outlets. They tend to hire local employees or family, and focus their ambitions on providing for themselves and their families financially, not on dominating an industry. They usually fund their business via financial support from friends and family or from small business loans.

Scalable start-up entrepreneurs
are typified by the Silicon Valley businessperson. They start companies hoping to change the world with their desired accomplishments, be they new advances in biomedical engineering or social media innovations. They attract investment from financial investors, called venture capitalists, and try to hire the best and brightest workers to discover a repeatable and scalable business model. When they find it, these entrepreneurs seek additional venture capital to fund more rapid business expansion. Scalable startups in innovation clusters (Silicon Valley, Shanghai, New York, Bangalore, Israel, etc.) comprise a small percentage of entrepreneurs and start-ups. But, they attract almost all of the venture capital and press attention.

Large company entrepreneurs
work within larger corporations to expand their market coverage. Large companies have finite life cycles, and changes in consumer preferences can create pressure for disruptive innovation, requiring the businesses to create entirely new products sold to new customers in new markets. This is often accomplished by acquiring companies that work in the desired fields.

Social entrepreneurs try to create products and services that address social needs on a large scale. They seek to generate long-term social value rather than profits, and the organizations they lead may be non-profit, for-profit, or a hybrid of the two.

Source: Blank, Steven. “Startup America—Dead on Arrival,” Steve Blank, February 8, 2011.

Check out Spotlight on Careers for Resume and Interview advice (for username and password, please contact Career Services).

TIA is an incubator program for Colgate students who aspire to be entrepreneurs. Students take their own ventures and work with alumni mentors to help them turn their dreams into reality. The goal is for the ventures to “go live.”

Learn more at https://tiainstitute.colgate.edu/

There is no clearly defined entrepreneurship career path. People decide to become entrepreneurs at all stages of educational and professional development, and only recently has entrepreneurship begun to be discussed as a lifelong career. As such, aspiring entrepreneurs cannot find definitive employer and job option classifications. Instead, they can begin networking and advertising their business ideas through associations and professional organizations dedicated to creating communities of entrepreneurs. Many of these groups target their services to particular types of business owners, including technology entrepreneurs, women, and African Americans.

Visit spotlightoncareers.org/career/entrepreneurship/employer-job-options/ and scroll down for a list of entrepreneurship associations and professional organizations that can give you a network base with which to develop and act on your entrepreneurial ambitions.

• Angel List - Job and internship platform for opportunities in the start-up and tech spaces, including opportunities in start-up investing, fundraising, and recruiting
• First Round Capital - Entrepreneur-focused investment firm that offers jobs based on a customized profile
• Highland Capital Partners - Global VC firm offering over 200 job listings at venture-backed, early-stage, emerging growth companies
• Kiva - Socially conscious organization offering careers and internships in the common good start-up space; focused on alleviating the effects of poverty worldwide
• Net Impact - Social entrepreneurial resource that offers jobs and internships in the realms of social enterprise/impact, energy and clean tech, education, and public sector innovation
• Sequoia Capital - Charity-based investment firm that offers full-time opportunities and internships as well as a job board for their partner start-ups
• Startupers - Job board for careers in start-ups; a resource that helps entrepreneurs find employees for their own companies
• Venture Beat - Online news source and job board for individuals seeking employment in start-ups and tech companies
• VentureLoop - Online job board and career resource featuring 585 start-up companies, full-time postings, and internship opportunities

• IRS Small Business - Provides industry and profession-specific tax information, as well as links to other helpful non-IRS resources
• National Federation of Independent Business - Offers a variety of tools and tips for small business owners
• U.S. Small Business Administration - Offers a variety of programs and support services to help individuals navigate application steps; offers business plan resources and other assistance to small business owners
• United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship - A resource for continued education on entrepreneurship, including forums, launch competitions, national conferences, and a job board