While reading some posts and magazine articles on entrepreneurship it came to me that many people see entrepreneurship as something sexy to do. I may be using the word sexy to mean lot’s of things in this post and I hope to explain myself better in the following lines. A few weeks ago I was chatting with a friend at a local Starbucks and he commented that he believed that entrepreneurship was seen as a ‘WOW’ thing to do specially by all the media we consume. Most of that media is originated in the US. Don’t get me wrong the US produces lot’s of revolutionary content and has amazing approaches to numerous things. One of those things is Project VRM which I think will revolutionize the world soon enough.
On the ground of sources for entrepreneurs, the ones coming from the US, Canada & the rest of developed nations offer a great insight on what to do, how to do it and the main problems we may find. Some other sources even give us a little bit of coaching telling us that we need to resilient in order to start a business. What I see commonly in this sources is that entrepreneurship is described as ‘sexy’. What I mean by sexy is something that you want to do because it’s how we make big fortunes and because it’s cool not to be dependent on a job. There’s a assumption there that entrepreneurs have the choice of a normal job. I think that the recovering economy in the US and the realities of developing countries tell us that a job is not the un-sexy thing to do, because sometimes the possibility of getting one doesn’t even exist.
Entrepreneurship in my country, Peru, is all about survival. It’s not the sexy thing to do or done with the intention of pursuing your passion (but most of the time you end up pursuing it either way), it’s done with the intention of putting some Choco Krispies and Milk on our plates every morning. The survival approach makes some of the entrepreneurship advice invalid for some realities. For example, one may argue that spending money is good if you do it in the correct things. What if there was no money to spend even in the correct things? How can you design a startup process where you start building a cash base to then grow your company? The answer doesn’t fall in any advice I’ve read before. The starting process that comes from necessity is really complex to study and it rarely follows the established path of startup.
Not following the established and recommended path for a startup it’s difficult, because many of the believed-to-be “solved” problems appear when you start for survival reasons. There are many books on that and my favorite one is “The Art of the Start” buy Guy Kawasaki, which is useful even if you start out of passion or need. Solved problems as having someone to pitch too or having the ability or knowledge to make a market research. And lacking all this things startups in Peru, India and the US that are started out of need succeed.
What makes them succeed?
- Love for your family: Many don’t consider this, but wanting eagerly to be able to provide for your family increases your power to keep fighting and doing more than you could humanly can. This is the main reason this startups keep coming back with multiple iterations of their product as they have to adapt to survive.
- Loneliness: I’m not using this word properly (maybe?), but being alone (i.e no government, insurance, contacts or friends) makes you aware that if you’re not fighting for you no one would do it. And you get to fight a huge fight.
- Transcend: Many entrepreneurs want to transcend in the way of creating new jobs for their communities and putting their country on the map so their company can grow bigger and better and to give the chance to many more to come.
In conclusion, entrepreneurship is not a sexy thing it’s done for survival (in many cases) and sometimes the startup conversation doesn’t help people in this condition. Many of the books in the US and talks about bootstrapping are showing that the number of startups done out of the need for survival and to transcend are growing more and more. It will be wise to study the process in developing countries to offer a bit more of advice to those that not fall in the recurring stereotypes of the entrepreneur.
