ENTREPRENEUR /STARTUP SPECIAL ....................Many roads to building a startup

Many roads to building a startup





One of the wonderful things about entrepreneurship is that it is open to all because it has many entry points

If you are not already an entre preneur, or never want to become one, why should you get interested in entrepreneurship? People involved in entrepreneurship, be they entrepreneurs themselves, or policy makers or educators, or others, usually assume that it is entrepreneurs who start new ventures.Additionally, that most new ventures are products of active intentions of their founders who see opportunities where others can see none. But sometimes it is not the entrepreneurs who find or make new opportunities.Sometimes other people find and make the entrepreneurs.

Arthur C Clarke's short story Saturn Rising is written in the first person voice of a spaceship captainturned entrepreneur. The captain never dreamed he would become an entrepreneur. He is persuaded by a series of encounters with Morris Perlman, a wealthy hotelier who approaches the captain unannounced for breakfast one day. Perlman recounts the story of his first glimpse of Saturn through a telescope he had built from scratch as a poor little boy.The captain is not very impressed at first. And when he encounters Perlman again years later with a question about Saturn's moons, “Which would be the best satellite for a tourist resort?“ he tries to convince Perlman that no one could afford to book a passage to Titan. Perlman calmly responds, “What you say is true enough now, but I've studied history. And I understand people ­ that's my business.“

The story of Perlman's encounter with the spaceship captain-turned “accidental entrepreneur“ is more common in the history of entrepre neurship than you might think.For example, Kiran Mazumdar Shaw calls herself an accidental entrepreneur because she had never intended to become one. Instead, she had wanted a career in the beer industry, to become a master brewer in a profession dominated by men. She studied for it in Australia and even topped her class. But she experienced one rejection after another, and ultimately returned to India without a job in hand. However, a friend who wanted to set up shop in India to manufacture bio-chemicals persuaded her to start Biocon, which she then grew to a multi-billion dollar success.

Sometimes it is not a customer, but a competitor who persuades someone to become an entrepreneur. Tom Stemberg, founder of the office supplies giant Staples had been managing grocery stores when the corporation he was working for decided to close down his store and let him go. Wondering what he should do next, Stemberg experienced what Mazumdar-Shaw had, until he got a call from one of his fiercest competitors in the grocery business offering to fund him in a new venture of his choice.

These stories suggest that it's unproductive to think about entrepreneurship as something that “those“ crazy heroic people “out there“ do.Nor even that you have to be or become an entrepreneur to get wonderful new ventures started. How often do people working in large corporations come up with an idea that their bosses don't want to consider? Are your only choices then to give up on the idea or leave your job to start your own venture? How many times have you wondered why a simple gadget that could solve a problem has not yet been produced? Do you ignore those moments because you define yourself as an engineer or writer or cook or homemaker? And how many times do you encounter an entrepreneur on the street corner who does something superbly, but is unaware of the larger potential? Do you ever wonder how you could help that entrepreneur grow into a franchise or do you simply not even think about it because you are neither an entrepreneur nor an investor?
In a sense, entrepreneurship is not a profession. One of the wonderful things about entrepreneurship is that it is open to all because it has many entry points. In fact, one of the most important lessons that even expert entrepre neurs learn is that unexpected stake holders who self select into their ventures are key to building endur ing ventures. When the founders of Pike Place Market Shop, a tiny coffee shop, saw Howard Schultz, a salesman from Hammerplast, walking in, they couldn't possibly have known that meeting would end in a global enterprise like Starbucks. Neither did Schultz, of course. I'm not suggesting that there aren't any skills required to be an entrepreneur. To build an enduring venture, you do have to stitch together a crazy quilt of a variety of stakeholders, including customers, suppliers, employees, investors, distributors, and professional advisors. That takes time and practice and much trial and error. But it doesn't change the fact that new ventures are often kickstarted by stakeholders who guide nonentrepreneurs into becoming entrepreneurs.

So keep an eye out for happy accidents -that unexpected knock on the door from people who see something in you that you haven't noticed in yourself. These situations aren't really doors to new op portunities; they act more like mirrors, helping you to recognize and rebuild yourself in a new way.

In Clarke's story, the captain decides to indulge Perlman and offers Titan as the best option to build the hotel. He listened to me very carefully, and if he thought I was making fun of his impractical, unscientific notions he gave no sign of it. And fifteen years later, the captain ends up building and running the hotel on Titan. It's just like running a spaceship, of course ­ many of the technical problems are identical.

This is our world too, isn't it? An entrepre neur can be a chemical engineer (Anthony Bessemer), a chemical engineer can be a writ er (Rajsekhar Bose), a writer can be a surgeon (Atul Gawande), and a surgeon can be an entrepreneur (M. S.

Valiathan). So ignore labels like “entrepre neur“ and “non-en trepreneur“ and open yourself to the pos sibility that you too will build a venture, or help someone else build one, even if it is only accidentally.

And even if you are not an entrepreneur and don't want to be come one, notice that all around you are po tential entrepreneurs and amazing new ventures waiting for your knock on the door. What exactly are YOU waiting for?

by Saras Sarasvathy

The author is the Isidore Horween Research Professor, The Darden Graduate School of Business, University of Virginia

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