Spirit of a Pirate, Execution of a Navy SEAL

“Entrepreneurs are prone to mythologizing the early days of their businesses, yet these stories mislead those who aspire to follow in their footsteps.” –Bill Aulet in the WSJ

Earlier this month, Bill Aulet had a great article in the WSJ about teaching entrepreneurship. It’s hard for anyone to teach entrepreneurship. It’s sometimes hard for non-entrepreneurs to teach entrepreneurship due to the “do what I say, not what I do” credibility factor.

Principles of entrepreneurship can be taught. Case studies are useful. But nothing really prepares you for striking out on your own.

In the time since we started AccelerEyes, several frameworks and codified principles have developed to provide useful structure, including: customer development, lean startup, growth hacking, and more. These are awesome. Also, accelerator programs provide useful community and fostering of entrepreneurial beginnings.

At the end of the day, every entrepreneur needs to understand that they have to do hard things. They have to build stuff. They have to sell stuff. Building stuff and selling stuff should be so all-consuming that everything else gets ignored, neglected, or just barely satisfied.

I learned a new word today from Bob Metcalfe, who tweeted, “Signs of an Entrepreneurship Bubble: Too many potemkin startups and their cargo-cult.” Potemkin means something artificial or a sham. There are potemkin startups. Those are the ones that are not doing the hard things. They worry more about showing traction than having traction.

One benefit of bootstrapping a startup is that you cannot be a potemkin startup for very long, unless you want to live poorly (which a few do).

While some startup outcomes are luck based, many fail for lack of execution. To be a great entrepreneur, you need the “spirit of a pirate and the execution of a Navy SEAL,” as quoted in the WSJ article above. Build stuff and sell it.

What are your thoughts on becoming a great entrepreneur? What differentiates a potemkin startup from a great startup?

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