Entrepreneur Myths Read Free

advertising business, loaded with debt. He had to succeed. He might have walked away and become an employee somewhere, but he chose the path of entrepreneurship, saved the family business, and made billions. Today, he’s the largest landowner in America.
     
I’ve seen entrepreneurs quit their day jobs and start their venture without first proving their idea had validity or market acceptance. They came to me for money, desperate. Don’t be a brave, stupid-ass entrepreneur like I used to be. Be a smart, low-risk entrepreneur. Backing yourself against the wall is not going to make you work any harder in your venture. It will only make it worse.
     
I funded an entrepreneur couple in the computer hardware sector. They were so broke when they came to pitch me that they had to leave their car running for two hours during their investor presentation. They couldn’t afford to fix the car and were afraid that if they turned it off, it wouldn’t start again. Lucky for them, I funded their ass. They later told me the story, and we laughed our asses off. Looking back, I wondered why they were so nervous during the meeting.
     
It’s hard to pitch investors when you’re flat broke. Try not to put yourself into this position. The media glamorizes entrepreneurs who risked it all and won. Please realize these entrepreneurs hit the “entrepreneur lotto.” Yes, those stories are real. However, the media seldom talks about all of the entrepreneurs who risked it all, lost everything and now work at McDonald’s.
     
Do me a fucking favor.  Try not to risk it all. I did it a few times and sometimes it worked out, but other times I faced failure of major consequences.
     
My advice: risk it all while you’re young. If you fail, you have time to recover. But no matter what any entrepreneur says, failure is a fucked up road.
     
Brain Candy: questions to consider and ponder
     
(Q1) Have you risked everything to fund your venture? What was the result? Would you do it again?
     
(Q2) Is it better to risk it all when you’re young and inexperienced or when you’re older and experienced?
     
(Q3) If you risked it all and failed, how did you recover? Did you come out of failure quickly?
     
(Q4) Do you think the media glamorizes entrepreneur success?
     
(Q5) If starting and self-funding a venture, how much money is in reserve, based on your personal burn rate? How many months can you survive?
     
(Q6) When was the last time you saw a story in the news that started like this: “This is CNN. Coming up after the break, we have a wonderful tidbit of failure to share with you.”
     

Entrepreneur Myth 4 | You must have domain expertise to start a venture
     

     
Domain expertise, or being an expert in a particular area, is important but it can also be a hindrance. Sometimes knowing too much can make you dumb — it blinds your imagination or outside-of-the-circle thinking. Most people are domain experts in some area, but not every domain expert makes a great entrepreneur — at least not from a leader or founder perspective.
     
In college, I started an advertising agency as part of my entrepreneurship class.I went to great lengths to learn the art of advertising. David Ogilvy’s book, Ogilvy on Advertising, is a must read for any entrepreneur. When asked what he brings most to a client, David simply stated, “Objectivity.” I didn’t truly absorb what he meant until later. Domain expertise is critical for a startup, but objectivity is equally as important.
     
When Jobs and Wozniak started Apple, they weren’t domain experts for the emerging computer industry. Bill Gates started Microsoft, but he didn’t come from IBM. When Pierre Omidyar and Jeff Skoll started eBay they weren’t experts in online auctions. Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, didn’t come from the book publishing sector. And Mark Zuckerberg wasn’t a social media guru when he founded Facebook.
     
These founders were not domain experts because the markets were emerging