Sallie Krawcheck wrote a great article here, with one exception I will bring up.
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https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-you-should-leave-your-job-become-entrepreneur-sallie-krawcheck
Why You Should NOT Leave Your Job to Become an Entrepreneur
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stock here: I suggest you read some of the comments in her article also, almost 600.
It is funny how she define "entrpreneur" as a very limited "innovative product manufacturer funded by venture capitalists". Any small business owner needs to have the skills sets to do all the things that she mentions.
I would "venture" to say, that a small business owner needs to be proficient in 100 to 200 separate types of skills, and not in any SMALL WAY, dealing with government bureaucracy, paperwork, and people who just don't give a shit. Industry entry and continuation blockades are also common and are true barriers that suck up resources to overcome.
But let's reign it back in to the topic at hand.....Large Military Industrial Complex cartels, like the nuclear cartel, and Big Lob, Big Gov. These things are crushing to the real wealth creators of the world....small business and entrepreneurs. Add in Big Data, Big Propaganda, and you have the perfect mix for a disasterous whimpering papered over shameful demise of empires.
It's one piece of the puzzle.
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I went to a recent
Ellevate Network
event, at which we hosted a pretty prominent entrepreneur, who runs a
VC-funded start-up that’s gaining some real traction. In other words,
she’s “living the dream.” Someone in the audience asked her whether it
was fun to be an entrepreneur.
She paused.
Her answer? “No. Not really.”
I can relate. In addition to owning the Ellevate Network, I’ve recently announced a Series A raise for a new business,
Ellevest.
This is a to-be-launched digital investment platform for women. These
after a career at big companies. And not a handful of days goes by that
someone doesn’t ask me “Aren’t you having so much fun?”
The truth is that being an entrepreneur is harder than running
Merrill Lynch. (And I’m not just saying that; I actually ran Merrill
Lynch.) It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
Sure, it’s great not to have to attend the Operational Risk Committee
meeting and sit through the page-by-page review of the 226-page deck. I
can’t tell you how great.
But for those of you thinking of leaving your big-company job to be an entrepreneur, here’s why you shouldn’t:
Raising money can be humbling. Really humbling. None of us likes being told our baby is ugly…..again and again and again. “But, hey, keep in touch.”
B2B sales are humbling….and take longer than you can imagine.
No, your phone calls aren’t returned as quickly as when you worked in
your big company job. You expect that. The more interesting insight to
me has been how often people try to be nice and end up stringing you
along. They don’t recognize that a “fast no” is ok; it’s the “slow no”
that kills you.
And even a “slow yes” can put you out of business. I worked with one
guy at a big bank who loved a start-up so much…and encouraged them so
much…that the start-up ran out of money and shut its doors as all of the
approvals for doing business with them were working their way through
the system.
So sometimes a “fast no” can even trump a “slow yes.”
Hiring people is hard. Hiring people is always hard.
But at a start-up, the stakes are so much higher. That’s in part
because there are simply fewer people, so one has to be more thoughtful
about making sure there aren’t any holes in the start-up team’s
skillsets (and that includes filling in the founder’s “flat sides”).
That’s why, for me, team diversity is so important.
And is it just me?? Because I’ve found, amongst entrepreneurs, some
of the most talented people I’ve ever worked with, by good measure; they
love the rush of entrepreneurialism and would never thrive in the
constraints of a big company.
And then there have been some others. I’ve come across a couple of
screamers. By that I mean, people who scream. At work. A lot. The
screamers are filtered out of big companies pretty quickly. So watch for
people who’ve bounced around a lot, and particularly watch for people
who receive less-than-effusive recommendations. And always, always do
back-channel reference checks.
Hiring people is hard, Part 2. If you come from a
corporate background, many of your contacts won’t fit your job
descriptions and needs: the jobs pay less cash than what big company
folks are making, the jobs may be broader than what they are doing , and
parts of the jobs can be more junior.
(An example: I’m copyediting and have been building earnings models.
Not something I would have thought I would be doing at this stage of my
career. I happen to love both of those things and find them relaxing.
But that may be a personal quirk.)
I had this issue at Ellevest. As we began to hire, you would have
thought I would have known a lot of Chief Investment Officers….and I do.
But it took me the better part of a year to find our Chief Investment
Officer because I wanted one who had the experience and analytical
grounding….but then was able to, and wanted to, approach the puzzle of
women and investing in a creative way.
Office space. When I speak to
young-entrepreneur-hopefuls, I hear what they think the office
environment will be like. Start with a bit of time in a shared
workspace; then move into your own offices with exposed brick walls, a
foosball table and beer on tap; and then you’re a billionaire.
For some, perhaps. Right now, at my start-up, we’re in a space that’s
so small I can’t get out of my chair without slamming into the back of
our lead designer. At some point, we may fuse into the same person.
And everybody’s a critic. If your idea is truly
innovative, you’re going to hear from the naysayers. After all, if it
were such a good idea, someone would have already done it, right??
Oh, and it’s terrifying. Something I never thought
about in my big-company job: cash flow. When your business has billions
of dollars in revenue, you can make a lot of mistakes and still have a
viable business. But in a start-up, make a few hiring mistakes (it takes
several months to find the right person, a couple of months to figure
out they’re not the right person, a couple of more months when you try
to coach them and give them the opportunity to become the right person,
then another couple of months after you part ways to find the next right
person)….oh, and the work they’re supposed to be doing doesn’t get done
in that period of time….well, do that a few times and you’re out of
money.
Being an entrepreneur is the only time in my career that I’ve lost sleep (and I was on Wall Street during the financial crisis.)
There is a lot of paperwork…and taxes….and regulations…. I
can’t tell you the number of people who tell me they slipped up on some
of the paperwork needed for their company. It’s one of the no-fun parts
of being an entrepreneur that nobody talks about.
You can’t coast. You know those days at the office
when you used to come in and didn’t really do that much? You don’t have
those days as entrepreneur. If you don’t do much, then not much happens.
And remember what I said about cash flow? Yeah….that.
This last paragraph is the one in which I am supposed to say that,
even with all of this, I wouldn’t trade being an entrepreneur for
anything. And, for me, that’s right. But the failure rate for
entrepreneurs is high, so I had to be very, very honest with myself
about my, and my family’s, willingness to take on this professional
risk.
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HoTaters
