An entrepreneur is someone who takes risks to start a company. That's the definition I've always used. If you assign more weight to the title than that, that's up to you, but I don't see anything wrong with someone calling themselves an entrepreneur because they start a company. There is risk, even small, in every venture. Failure, for one. Loss of time, for another.
More annoying to me are people who call themselves "President/CEO" when they have no employees or not enough employees to even have a corporate hierarchy where "President/CEO" would carry some swagger.
"Lemonade Stand Founder", "Google Founder" -- note how it puts the emphasis on the enterprise, not on the person. Problem solved. :)
But yes, people don't seem to understand that CEO implies that there are other executives, of whom you are the chief. It's not just a startup issue, I've also worked at large companies where Managers don't manage and VPs don't report to Ps. It makes sense; titles are the cheapest form of compensation.
Of course it leads to title inflation. By 2050 everyone will be a CEO, and they'll report to the CECEO.
I agree. I've been "Lead Developer" on development teams of one - and I didn't give myself that title. That's what the corporation gave me and printed onto business cards.
For me, I felt most uncomfortable when I first got hired as a "senior engineer." I was 25 and only ~2 years out of school. I told the HR person, I don't think I'm senior. Didn't matter. They were tasked with hiring senior level talent, so that's the level I needed to be. Turns out, I was more senior than I thought and did great in the post. It just was weird at first because I felt as if I hadn't earned it.
If people want to call themselves entrepreneurs to give themselves inspiration, confidence, or ambition, I have no problem with that. I doubt the term is going to suffer much dilution.
Before I was an entrepreneur (and I believe I am one), I had spend nine years as an untenured Assistant Professor at UCLA. And I remembered my colleagues used to spend a great deal of time and efforts subdividing their disciplines and making sure that everyone inside and outside academia classifying them exactly as they wished to be classified. This was a puzzle to me until I read the following quote from Henry Kissinger (after he had left the government but was turned down by Columbia University), "The reason why there are so much politics in academia is because the stake is so low." I believe the stake is very high in entrepreneurship and I think no one benefits from spending too much time worrying about what we should be called. However, I think the article is a very good one, in the sense that there is indeed a whole lot of work in being a "successful" entrepreneur. Good luck everyone.
You're misunderstanding the meaning of "acting as intermediary between capital and labor". "Capital" doesn't mean money; economists use that word to refer to durable goods that can be used to produce other, salable goods. Most goods require some mix of labor and capital to produce, and Say is identifying entrepreneurs as the people who coordinate that mixing.
Even if "capital" were intended in the sense that you're imagining, it's not clear why it would need to be "startup money in a round of funding" or any other kind of loan. Plenty of entrepreneurs, in the 19th-century sense of the word, provide both financial and physical capital out-of-pocket.
Entrepreneur is a great example of a word, to quote George Trow, that is an "abandoned shell." It used to have great meaning as being an entrepreneur was incredibly difficult and rare and then technological changes came along and made it mean something totally different. The reason people are so attracted to [self-descriptively] using it is because they get the status of the old meaning with the lower barrier to entry of the new changes. You can't really fault other people for wanting the best of both worlds...but you can resist the temptation to delude yourself with it. At least that's my opinion.
There are many entrepreneurs who exist within companies and absolutely fit the definition and spirit of the term Entrepreneur.
Good post, and I understand the motivation for writing it but it's wrong. If you think you're an entrepreneur, most likely, you are one and nobody can tell you differently.
"If you think you're an entrepreneur, most likely, you are one and nobody can tell you differently." ...which is exactly why people like it so much. It's an unassailable self-description. I think it's best to steer clear of anything that puts you in that position because its pretty easy to spin off the planet.
I know I'm going to get a ton of shit for this post, but seriously, I meet/talk to/write about/help entrepreneurs all the time, and this phenomenon has me completely fed up with the tech "scene."
Why do people have this bottomless need to claim to be things they're not? Why can't they just revel in and promote the wonderful things they already are?
Society has always had people claim to be the things they're not. That's human nature Jolie.
You call yourself a journalist and student of computer science. Who am I to say you aren't? Sometimes your dreams become reality when you work to make them so, but for a while, you have to fake it till you make it. :-)
I will not say you are "wrong," in fact, I see your side of it, but you need to accept the fact that language changes ever so slowly. More precisely, language is self-encrypting.
For example, you're posting to "hacker news" when this has nothing to do with "hacking."
"Hacker News" is also about startups, though. And a lot of startups begin with hackers. I don't think it's at all irrelevant, especially given the number of hackers with apps who may or may not be legitimate entrepreneurs, as well.
It seems you misunderstood my statement. I never called your post irrelevant. In fact, it is relevant for this site. --I should have made it a bit more clear.
On this site, "hackers as founders" is a strongly expressed correlation, and hence, all of the wonderful startup, business and entrepreneur postings. None the less, the original definition of "hacker" was someone good at solving problems through programming computers. The term was later redefined as someone who breaks into computer systems, and redefined again as someone who breaks into computer systems for profit, or steals via computer systems.
If one did not know the "hackers as founders" idea/definition here on HN, then a post about "entrepreneurs" would seem out of place with any of the more common definitions.
I'm actually reading "Hackers" (the Levy book) now, and I've spent a lot of time thinking/writing/educating about the term, so I dig what you're getting at. =)
And the "hackers as founders" thing is kinda what Y Combinator is all about, yes?
> And the "hackers as founders" thing is kinda
> what Y Combinator is all about, yes?
The only person qualified to answer this question is Paul Graham himself. If you read his essays, as well as the various FAQ's and similar for both HN and YCombinator, you can see it in his own words.
After thinking about it for a bit, your article against people using of the term "entrepreneur" shows a lack of experience with "hackers" (as per it's original definition). The vast majority of the greatest hackers I've known absolutely suck at business, marketing, socializing and other important aspects of entrepreneurship. If you read up on Steve Wozniak or Robert Morris, you'll realize their success in business probably would not have happened without having someone else around willing to learn and do all the other stuff required by a successful venture. From what I've read of Paul Graham, including "On Lisp" and "ANSI Common Lisp," he seems to be a rare breed; good at tech and good at business. Most of his writing, HN and YCombinator all seems to emphasize and encourage people to be good at both. In essence, he promotes the idea of hackers as entrepreneurs.
There will always be those self-embracing the term "hacker" or the term "entrepreneur" who really are not what they claim to be, or do not meet the higher/highest end of the definitions. They are both terms of endearment and respect, but they are great things to aspire to be.
I get what you're saying about hackers, but I don't see why you'd necessarily correlate hackers with entrepreneurs. There's a very narrow overlap in that Venn diagram, precisely because hackers (orig. definition) don't do what they do to make money or build businesses. Hacker/founder/entrepreneurs are a rare enough breed.
Why do people have this bottomless need to claim to be
things they're not?
I could counter that with the question: why do you have this bottomless need to claim guardianship over the word 'entrepreneur' and chastise everyone that uses it in senses different from the rather strict personal definition you have attached to the word?
My girlfriend just wrote a thesis on a subject related to entrepreneurs. Her definition of 'entrepreneur' definitely does not contain 'having a staff' and 'having received outside investments'. 'Being solely responsible' is a common characteristics of a starting entrepreneurial firm, but isn't a defining characteristic. Established firms, with management and all that, can be entrepreneurial in nature, if they have proper innovation processes in place. 'Having a product' is also extremely common, but there are entrepreneurial firms that render only services. Finally, claiming someone doesn't become an entrepreneur until he has a 'legally recognized firm' is ridiculous. At some point you have to have a firm, but you can be an entrepreneur long before that. An official government stamp for abiding by the law does not confer the status of 'entrepreneurship' (supposing the other items in your list all applied).
It would be nice if I could provide a short list with the defining characteristics of 'entrepreneurship', but unfortunately there simply is no such thing. Like the traditional philosophical example of 'game', what falls under the denomination is fuzzy and debatable. If people can call 'dating' a game, the people you seem to be addressing can call themselves 'entrepreneurs'.
Instead of calling people out, why not out offer to help?
If they lack capital, point them towards VCs, Angels, Super Angels, etc, or useful resources on how to get off the ground with out much capital, Google App Engine, Dreamhost, etc.
If they have capital point them towards sources where they can get labour, craigslist, rent-a-coder, etc.
If they still have a job point them towards people who talk about the transition, etc.
I think according to jolie's definition until recently patio11 would be considered not an entrepreneur. Yet, he's a prolific poster, has his own thing going on, etc. (Not sure if he describes himself as an entrepreneur, but I definitely appreciate his business and tech insights).
Simply put instead of chastising people for using the wrong term, help them to be 'entrepreneurs'. A post on how to transition from 'wantrepreneur' to 'entrepreneur' would be far more helpful. It's a difficult transition from FTE to entrepreneur, and I don't think we should be kicking people when they are down for having the dare to dream.
More annoying to me are people who call themselves "President/CEO" when they have no employees or not enough employees to even have a corporate hierarchy where "President/CEO" would carry some swagger.