Yet one sees a whole bunch of of these “forced entrepreneurs” flourish, learn better than most “choice” entrepreneurs about managing cash flows, hiring, marketing, CRM, and even scaling. Sure – its not usually about 10x scale (though a few do turn out that way) but thats a very VC driven attribute, and entrepreneurship is defined by so much else.
A plumber whose service my wife employs for certain rainwater harvesting and water management projects they undertake is one example I’ve seen. The guy now has a bunch of other guys he’s trained, manages, finds work for, supervises. He takes bottomline responsibility for the team, has printed business cards and invested into a van for transporting his team and material more efficiently. He’s been known to go ahead and market the idea amongst potential customers. He’s managed growth – both of his business and of his role. Sure, he was probably forced into this – but that has hardly stopped him from embracing entrepreneurship.
There’s a couple of legendary tales of paan-wallahs who’ve built business empires from their vantage points, while continuing to humbly assemble the daily dose for customers. There are small grocers who’ve adopted the aisle format and setup chains without losing their USPs of delivery, cash on delivery and the personal touch they had when operating a single small store. They’ve obviously managed hiring very closely since that was key to the whole experience.
Darshinis which grew into large catering businesses. Tailors who now own brands. Local courier companies which now manage logistics for corporates across the country – there’s just tons of examples.
In some sense, aren’t techies who’re “forced” into entrepreneurship because of circumstances – perhaps a stream of bad bosses and workplaces, or the peer pressure of everyone else around them striking out on their own – also “forced” into entrepreneurship ?
The point of this huge rant ? Its not important how you got there. What you did, learned and what you managed to make of it afterwards is. So next time you use “forced entrepreneur” dismissively, think again if there are lessons there that you could instead gain from.
Some references to “forced entrepreneurship”. Another, from a different perspective (and continent).
Ont thing is for sure… no one with working hands & head will ever die of hunger… so why not try enterprising…? This was good read
I am reminded of a say
“There is a lot difference between a traditional monk and a monk because of starvation”…
Excellent post…I hold the same view…If two 25 year old techies f*** around in their dad’s garage for 2 years failing at everything..its still a great startup story, but a man works for 10 years patiently and builds the best grocery store in your neighbourhood and we hesitate in showing respect…
These so called “foreced entrepreneurs” don’t go around begging for mentoring or seed funding…they fight it out on the street…and succeed in building a profitable business. We all who aspire to build successful tech startups should learn from such people around us rather than worship any words coming from an ABCD…
@rohit I would respectfully disagree with you. Most of the grocery stores are doing just that fighting out on the street , which isnt fun. Talk about customer service which none can give. because selling commodity products mean wafer thin margins.
@author
Yes forced entrepreneurship is a valid categorization and i dont see it as condescending. Everybody needs to feed themselves at the end of the day. But then it isnt really ‘enterprising’ to open another grocery store with no degree of imagination and lower pricing being the only differentiation.To my mind this type of entrepreneurship is no different then being ‘stuck’ in a job where you curse yourself being there but cant get out of it because it still feeds you at the end of the day.
@aditya
Great that you do not use it condescendingly. A lot of references, though, do have that spirit. I may be trying to read more than can be justified by the words alone, but “no degree of imagination and lower pricing being the only differentiation” seems like a borderline case as well.
In any case, my point, though, is that the categorization serves no purpose from the pov of entrepreneurs. By looking at things through this lens, lessons that can learned are lost. Irrespective of how people arrived there, a certain set will do the “entrepreneurial things” and be creative/innovative/scale the business etc in their own ways. Its not to say that every such business has these qualities, yet its not right to dismiss all of them out of hand either – which is what a categorization usually achieves.
OTOH, there are numerous startups as well doing it for the romance of it and who have not necessarily stumbled upon any of the qualities that one could associate with entrepreneurship. A subset of these will surely learn these and execute on them as they go along. But thats how it is with any business.
People get ‘stuck’ in all kinds of jobs. But we’d do well to learn from those who change things while in there are nurture and pursue their dreams and desires. The size of the purse associated, or the TC-ability is not criteria enough.
- Sameer (aka @author
)
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this is not true, they shouldn’t do it forcefully, if they do they just sweeping out the hard earned money, they should focus what they wish too instead of what the parents do