With the advent of web 2.0 companies like Youtube, Google and others, the common belief is that entrepreneurship is easy. It’s a cake walk. It is true in the case of these companies and numerous others like them, but not so for a majority of such companies.
Glen Kelman has written a guest post in Guy Kawasaki’s blog, (via) quoting the flip side of entrepreneurship.
Glen is on the mark when he says he start ups are a hard work. Entrepreneurs are usually eccentrics who are driven by their foolhardy dreams. When Jamshed Tata wanted to build Jamshedpur, he was ridiculed largely because the mere idea of building a city on marshland seemed ridiculous. To start any firm, apart from Web 2.0 companies, it requires hard work as Glen points out. Entrepreneurs are also driven by the romanticism of the entire process of building their company, and the strong belief that better days are just ahead. This has lead to the culture of serial entrepreneurs, who move from one start up to another.
Google, Youtube, and other such Web 2.0 start ups are just a flash in the pan. There are unlikely to be many other successful firms which can be built like them.
Glen Kelman has written a guest post in Guy Kawasaki’s blog, (via) quoting the flip side of entrepreneurship.
“Lately I've been thinking how hard, not how easy, it is to build a new company. Hard has gone out of fashion. Like college students bragging about how they barely studied, start-ups today take care to project a sense of ease. Wherever I’ve worked, we’ve secretly felt just the opposite. We’re assailed by doubts, mortified by our own shortcomings, surrounded by freaks, testy over silly details. Trying to be like James or Markus has only been counterproductive.
And now, having been through a few startups, I’m not even sure I’d want it to be that easy. Working two hours a day on my own wasn’t my goal when I came to Silicon Valley. Does anybody remember the old video of Steve Jobs launching the Mac? He had tears in his eyes. And even though Jobs is Jobs and I am nobody, I knew how he felt. I'd had the same reaction--absurdly--to portal software and more recently to a Redfin, a fledgling real estate website.”
Glen is on the mark when he says he start ups are a hard work. Entrepreneurs are usually eccentrics who are driven by their foolhardy dreams. When Jamshed Tata wanted to build Jamshedpur, he was ridiculed largely because the mere idea of building a city on marshland seemed ridiculous. To start any firm, apart from Web 2.0 companies, it requires hard work as Glen points out. Entrepreneurs are also driven by the romanticism of the entire process of building their company, and the strong belief that better days are just ahead. This has lead to the culture of serial entrepreneurs, who move from one start up to another.
Google, Youtube, and other such Web 2.0 start ups are just a flash in the pan. There are unlikely to be many other successful firms which can be built like them.
