Ich Bin Ein Entrepreneur

by Victor Rozek

A number of years ago, when the microbrew craze was exploding in the Northwest, Budweiser ran a commercial in the hope of boosting its flagging beer sales. As I recall (and my memory may be faulty since this was quite a few beers ago), the company spokesman was leaning against a bar in what was supposed to be a 19th century pub and, as he pretended to polish an already spotless glass, he assured the audience that long ago Bud, too, started as a microbrew.

The strategy appeared to be if-you-can't-beat-'em-join-'em, but it failed to consider that it was the taste, not the title, that mattered to beer drinkers, and so the Northwest's love affair with microbrews continued unabated.

But Budweiser wasn't the only Gulliver pretending to be Lilliputian. Huge banks claim to offer personalized service, mammoth computer companies hawk customized PCs assembled to your specifications, and billion dollar brokerage houses promise investors individual attention. That so many large companies prefer to be thought of as intimate and small speaks to the desirability of entrepreneurial qualities that seem to fade with size and success.

IT, more so than other fields, has a strong entrepreneurial bent. Stephen Jobs and Bill Gates come to mind; men in basements who transformed ideas into institutions. And since IT is now an at-risk profession, (Thomas Friedman reports that the U.S. has fallen to 16th in the world in broadband connectivity), we would be wise to revisit our roots is case our careers suddenly require a spurt of new growth. But what are the qualities that make an entrepreneur successful and why are they lacking in mature companies where they are expressed primarily through marketing rather than service?

William Jennings interviewed a gaggle of Canadian entrepreneurs to discover what qualities they thought were most important to their success. Perseverance topped the list, good for individuals in small companies and large alike, but only when coupled with flexibility. IBM's stubborn perseverance, backing the mainframe against changing market trends, cost it the PC market. Misplaced perseverance, common to companies with popular products long past their prime, can be as damaging as a lack of persistence. The law of diminishing returns suggests there is a proper time to let go and move on. In general, perseverance works better for startups than established companies. And for those lacking entrepreneurial inclination, these days perseverance is measured by the number of layoffs they've avoided.

After perseverance, the entrepreneurs identified initiative and competitiveness as essential virtues. Initiative is one of those curious qualities; self-evidently important, but discouraged in practice. In spite of the fashionable pretense of valuing empowerment, initiative has been all but siphoned from the corporate blood supply. While essential in startups, initiative can be problematic in successful companies which thrive on formula and standardization. Wal-Mart doesn't want their euphemistically-named "associates" to exercise any initiative beyond showing up on time and doing precisely what they are told. Pepsi needs delivery drivers and marketeers, and while initiative is valued in generating marketing ideas, its role is limited in manufacturing and distribution. Excessive initiative in mature companies is often more disruptive than desirable, and is encouraged in only a small percentage of positions.

As for competitiveness, it is valued everywhere but it means different things in different contexts. Startups are typically fueled by new product ideas and therefore have no established competitors. In such circumstances, competition means getting a product to the market first. In established companies, being competitive has become a codeword for reducing costs and is therefore a euphemism for layoffs, outsourcing, and moving operations overseas.

The four remaining items on the list of entrepreneurial must-have qualities are self-reliance, a strong need to achieve, self confidence, and good health. Good health is perhaps the most interesting. Certainly hard to argue with. That it is so seldom mentioned in a business context may in part explain out-of-control health care costs. Good health is seldom fully valued until it has been lost, and most corporations worry about employee health only to the degree that illness is costly and disrupts the flow of work.

But the main difference between old and new companies are working conditions. Startup environments are typically infused with energy and expectation. The odds may be long, but the possibility of rewards is great. People are there by choice rather than necessity. That combination promotes happiness and therefore health. Illness often blooms from the seeds of long-term discontent, which are more likely spread throughout mature companies where risk and reward have been homogenized, maintenance of the old is at least as important as creating the new, and people stay because they must.

But perhaps more interesting than the list of desirable qualities were the qualities that successful entrepreneurs believed were least important. A strong desire for money was thought to be nonessential, but of course if the respondents were successful entrepreneurs they already had some. Being well organized didn't matter, either. I guess the assumption was that if you had a winning idea you could hire organizational skills, but being organized without ideas wouldn't help you much.

Patience was also thought to be overrated. But I suppose that perseverance (the first quality on the must-have list) is a form of proactive patience. Perhaps it's not a matter of patience per se, but a refusal to become discouraged, a quality that would serve anyone in any field.

Finally, the least important quality cited was the need for power. Sounds like denial to me. Try to convince Bill Gates that power is not important. But Gates is obviously something of an anomaly. Perhaps what entrepreneurs have in common is a refusal to be at the mercy of others. That's personal power as opposed to power over others. Having difficulty taking orders is one reason why people are attracted to programming, a profession which, while not strictly solitary, allows practitioners a great deal of control over their work.

What's most curious, however, is the disconnect between what entrepreneurs value in themselves and what the entrepreneur's best friend-the venture capitalist-values. Jim Clark is a billionaire with an uncanny ability to predict the next big money maker. He invested in Silicon Graphics and Netscape, among others, and now spends a lot of his time sailing yachts the size of Delaware. In an interview published in the May issue of Business 2.0, Clark was asked: "What traits should every good entrepreneur possess?" He named only two, and not only aren't they normally thought of as desirable, but none of the successful entrepreneurs polled by Jennings even mentioned them.

Clark wants his beneficiaries to display (are you ready?) "discontent and anxiety."

His reasoning is unarguably simple. "Most entrepreneurs," he says, "are not content with the way things are. But if they're smart, they're extremely anxious, too. Most ideas are going to happen whether you do them or someone else does. It's the person who feels most anxious about it and builds the prototype who is likely to win."

Great news! Who among us does not grapple with discontent and anxiety? Little did we know that we were closet entrepreneurs. Of course, beyond cultivating the virtues of discontent and anxiety, you need an idea. But you can probably hire a contented, calm, persevering, and healthy person to give you one. So start today. Cash in on your misery. Send your requests for seed money to Jim Clark. Nothing like a few million dollars of venture capital to relieve the anxiety and soothe the discontented brow.

And if you happen to be unfortunately well adjusted, remember that one of the greatest sources of discontent and anxiety is unemployment. No less an entrepreneur than Ted Turner offers this motivational insight: "My son is now an entrepreneur," says Ted. "That's what you're called when you don't have a job."

By that definition, I've been an entrepreneur several times over. And I probably would have remained an entrepreneur indefinitely if only Dad had some of Ted's dough.