Category Archives: Stream of Consciousness

Nurture vs. Nature: Is Entrepreneurship born or developed?

Shall I start this post with a quote?

“The common denominator of success — the secret of success of every man who has ever been successful — lies in the fact that he formed the habit of doing things that failures don’t like to do.” Albert E.N. Gray, exceprt from a major address at the 1940 NALU (National Association of Life Underwriters) annual convention in Philadelphia.

There’s been some debate throughout history, with whether a certain trait or characteristic is innate, or whether its developed. A scientist may call it a discourse on Nature vs. Nature.

With the advent of entrepreneurship — the term at least, the practice of it has been around since the origins of humanity of course — that discourse has extended to it.

Is an entrepreneur born or is he or she developed?

A friend sent me an email today saying “I am becoming convinced that entrepreneurs are born and cannot be made. Not good if you teach entrepreneurship.”

A very interesting argument to be sure, based on this person’s experiences with start-ups, but I’m not sure I wholly agree.

I think, it’s a combined force of nature and nature.

Some have it in them sure, some entrepreneurial characteristics. I’d say a bit of a rebellious nature is probably necessary. Also some confidence (this helps to whither the tough times), resilience, and a general vision and the will to gut it out.

But is the “habit of doing things that failures don’t like to do” innate, or can it be developed?

If only I had an audience to pitch this to, we could have some valuable discourse, unfortunately I’m not a beggar and I won’t be riding any wishes :).

A habit, of course, can be formed, and I believe the same is true with entrepreneurship. It is more a habit and a way of thinking than it is an actual characteristic that one is born with.

Some are most likely born with a greater propensity to develop this habit (just the way some are born with a high propensity to be alcoholics), but I wouldn’t bet that entrepreneurs cannot be developed.

At the heart of this question is whether or not a man can change his destiny. If he can’t, then he is destined to be and to do the path laid out before him. (i.e. he can’t be an entrepreneur)

And if we can change our destiny … ?

Stream of consciousness: IM chat clients and the rise of Social Networks, Why Google will buy Scribd or Docstoc

Many in the start-up world frequently mention an interesting warning: don’t create a product that is a solution looking for a problem. Rather, find the problem, and create the solution to it.

I’m not here to debate the veracity of that argument, but rather present an interesting thought that I twittered.

On IM chat clients, specifically AOL Instant Messenger and MSN Messenger, it took years before you could leave a message for someone and them receive it upon signing back in the service (if the message was sent while they were logged out.)

Add that to the skyrocketing use of the away message, and it was nearly impossible to know if the intended recipient truly read the message or not. Perhaps he or she signed in a different computer and logged out the computer logged in with the away message. Maybe the user signed in and accidentally closed the window with the message.

I wonder how much this contributed to the rise of the static social network (i.e. Friendster, Facebook, Hi5, Myspace, etc.)

Guestbooks, known on Fbook as “The Wall” and on MySpace as simply comments, has been around for years before the web 2.0 era, but usually hosted on an individual service platform, a la tripod or geocities, which wasn’t really well connected with users.

Xanga did a better job of this, but it was still more about blogging and sharing your life story than it was about connecting with your friends.

Even now, when I use AIM integrated with Gmail, my Gmail sidebar only shows me users who are “active.” I have about fifty friends who are always signed on, albeit with an “away message.” With the ability to send messages while in away status (and to even hide being signed on) this inevitably has led to most people simply never taking off their away message.

Obviously, this is a boon for privacy, but not so much for communication. That’s what I feel is the main attractiveness about the wall (besides being a lot less private than a direct IM). You leave a message, and if the user uses the service regularly, they WILL see the message, no doubt about it (as well as all of his or her friends).

Honestly I know this is a lot of analysis on such a small feature, but I strongly believe that it’s the small features that make or break a service.

Oh, and while using Gmail today, I realized that the behemoth must have plans to buy either Scribd or Docstoc.

Why?

Well when someone sends me an mp3, I can open that directly via Gmail, ditto for a 97-2003 word document, excel spreadsheet, or powerpoint.

But I can’t do that with a PDF.

I have to actually download the PDF to my computer, which is a big pain. And until they have Gdrive, maybe even more important when Gdrive releases, seamless PDF integration will be very important, and I believe Docstoc or Scribd will fit in nicely with Google Docs, Gmail, and the Google Apps suite.