Essay The Missing Entrepreneur in Economics

These entrepreneurs start a company knowing from day one that their vision could change the world. They attract investment from equally crazy financial investors – venture capitalists. They hire the best and the brightest. Their job is to search for a repeatable and scalable business model.  When they find it, their focus on scale requires even more venture capital to fuel rapid expansion. Steve Blank acknowledged that scalable startups in innovation clusters (Silicon Valley, Shanghai, New York, Bangalore, Israel, etc.) make up a small percentage of entrepreneurs and startups but because of the outsize returns, attract almost all the risk capital.

Sobel (2008), an entrepreneur is “someone who organizes, manages, and assumes the risks of a business or enterprise. An entrepreneur is an agent of change”. Sometimes becoming a successful entrepreneur is not about whether or not you have your M.B.A, it’s about your willingness to dedicate part of your life, money, and everything else to fulfilling your dreams. As Sobel’s definition includes the word “manages”, many entrepreneurs do have an advanced degree in some form of business to provide them with the knowledge to successfully manage their company. This provides them with the ability to handle their own payroll, accounts payable and receivable, and human resources. Entrepreneurs have many risks involved when beginning their company, such as: not succeeding, running out of money, or having to relocate. These risks were more common years ago when investors were not so easy to find and money was not so loosely handed out. Today’s entrepreneurs can usually fund themselves or have plenty of support from individual or group of investors. However, no matter the monetary support you have, an entrepreneur must make their company appeal to the public or their targeted group of customers. A successful entrepreneur cannot give up when things get tough, they have to accept what happened, provide a solution, and move

What do entrepreneurs do that distinguishes them from any other person involved in business? Why is it that personality characteristics may be good predictors of who will be a successful entrepreneur?

“The future lies before you, like a field of fallen snow; be careful how you tread it, for every step will show.” -Unknown

In Initial Human and Financial Capital as Predictors of New Venture Performance, Cooper et al (1994), reviewed a sample of 2994 entrepreneurs across various sectors, high-tech and non-high-tech, to determine whether an entrepreneur’s upbringing, experiences and education had a statistically significant relationship with the probability of success.

“The secret is here in the present. If you pay attention to the present, you can improve upon it. And, if you improve on the present, what comes later will also be better.”

So basically, this quote is about following the guidance and advice of your friends, and to do so you basically have to have faith in them.

Dr. Peter Watt, a professor at York St. John University, says that “one reason entrepreneurs drop out is the basic narrative as a restatement of Alger’s ‘rags-to-riches’ paradigm, [which] can be conceptualized, in its most simple form, as a narrative of ‘overcoming’ ” (Watt 35). In other words, entrepreneurs feel motivated to succeed more when they get the feeling of overcoming some form of adversity, such as dropping out. Similarly, Professor William Nickels asserts that being a successful entrepreneur is based more off of “personality.” According to Nickels, “You [aspiring entrepreneur] can learn about managerial and leadership skills needed to run a firm. However, you may not have the personality to assume the risks… [S]uch personality traits are harder to learn or acquire than academic skills” (Nichols 154). Essentially, Nickels position is that “to be a successful entrepreneur one must have entrepreneurial personality, be self-directed, self-nurtured, be action-oriented, energetic, and tolerant of uncertainty.” (Nickels et. al 154). Ironically, Nickels is a college professor who is telling this to his students. Perhaps he holds these views because some of his previous students who excelled in the course work, were not successful entrepreneurs. If personality traits dictates entrepreneurial skills, then does this attitude explain why

Jobs shared 3 personal stories at Stanford in which he explained how he came to be the creator of Apple Computers and Pixar Animation, and other important aspects of his life. Throughout these stories Jobs explained how you have to trust your instincts even if things do not go as planned. He truly gives great advice that makes you think about the quality of life. Here he explains, ”So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, and karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life,” (Jobs 2005). No statement has ever been so drawn to me before. I take this piece of advice wholeheartedly because it is something I think we should always keep in the back of our minds when we need a reminder of how life

Based on Knight’s economics view (1921), risk-taking is crucial to entrepreneurism. This view is supported by many classical theorists like Cantillon and Richard (1755) who explore that entrepreneurs bear risks or uncertainty to keep supply-demand balance. Phan (2008) also support this positive relationship and assert that entrepreneurs are risk-takers, not gamblers. However, Bula (2012) argues that

So, whether you started last week or you 've been in the game for over 5 years, hats off. Keep your eyes on the ball despite the daily challenges.

Entrepreneuring: efforts to bring about new economic, social, institutional, and cultural environments through the actions of an individual or group of individuals → emancipatory process with broad change potential. This view foregrounds three aspects: (1) seeking autonomy, (2) authoring, and (3) making declarations.

IERA Venture Capital contracts and builds up the most expert, experienced individuals in our industry. To better serve our customers, we give our colleague specialized preparing, pertinent through the key commercial ventures we serve. Our administrators have the ability to rapidly and professionally unravel the difficulties confronted by our new entrepreneurs. Each individual from the IERA group, is focused on conveying the most astounding quality administration utilizing the most recent business sector data, innovative progressions and a level of individual consideration that every single customer expects.

This article gives an overview of the entrepreneurial finance literature. The studies reviewed highlight the sources of finance for the entrepreneurial firms. One of the basic difficulties in starting and growing a business is getting the initial capital to start up a business. Same is the case in order to grow the business further. To obtain initial financing, the entrepreneur has to think about the source of funds along with the type provided. The initial source of funds almost always comes from individuals-family and friends or private individual investors often called angels. These sources provide over 80% of the funds for startups in almost every country and are the key to bringing innovation to the market (Gary Gibbons, Robert D. Hisrich, Carlos M. DaSilva. 2015). The study indicates that the most common sources of entrepreneurial finance are angel investors, venture capital funds, corporate investors and financial bootstrapping.

The early work of Schumpeter (1934) pointed out that the accountability of risk hinders on ownership, and given that entrepreneurs does not necessarily signify owners, risk propensity should be excluded as part of the traits of an entrepreneur. In its place, Schumpeter suggests innovation to be the primary trait of entrepreneurship.