Not Only Luck.
An essay by John Melonakos

3 Attributes for High Probability Entrepreneurial Success

With tomorrow’s Failcon on my mind, my thoughts have turned to entrepreneurial failure. There have been so many times in the last 7 years when ArrayFire could have failed.

Failure of a particular startup is not the death of entrepreneurship. Often it is the beginning of something successful for the entrepreneur.

I believe that anyone can become a successful entrepreneur if they have 3 qualities:  1) competence, 2) a disposition to do substantive work, and 3) persistence especially though tough times (often for 5+ years). While the odds of any particular startup are lower, my experience is that the odds of succeeding as an entrepreneur are fairly high when those 3 ingredients are found.

The hardest of these is #3. As this article points out, Mark Cuban also believes that the top reason people fail is not only a “lack of brains” but “a lack of effort.”

Tomorrow I will share 4 stories at Failcon of our journey through entrepreneurial ups and downs. See you there!

 

Related articles