Entrepreneurshipness

First, technology start-up success is an environment subject to radical uncertainty. This can be proven since there is less money returned to investors in the global VC sector than goes in from this same cohort of investors; that is, it is a gamble, an environment where you need luck to either pick or be a winner.So why do some VC’s and some entrepreneurs seem to have systematic success? Well, they solve their problems and create their opportunities by having access to unusually high levels of capital. That is, they throw money at their problems. If all access to capital was equal there would be very, very few recurring winners.So why bother seeking habits or traits of successful entrepreneurs? There is a point and that is that the right basic personality and skills are a necessary (but NOT sufficient) trait for success. So even if you have the right personality and right skill set, you may still fail as an entrepreneur. In fact you are more than likely to fail, time and time again.There’s a bias in the social media environment that we live in that makes people think they can “cargo cult” their way to success. For example, adopt the 7 habits of highly successful people and you will be one. Or, eat fruit, be an arrogant dickhead and wear all black, and you will end up as CEO of Apple. This is not the case; these are correlations and not causations.So, a final word, any measure of your “entrepreneurshipness” (or whatever) should be treated with the disrespect it deserves. By all means, find out if you have the necessary traits and skills. Note well though, even if you do, you need access to bucket loads of luck, or access to enormous amounts of risk capital (which also requires bucket loads of luck).Whichever way you look at it, luck is needed. And you can’t cargo cult yourself into being lucky.The visitation of luck is a random thing. Some get it first time, and forever after think they are geniuses. Some never get it. Some give up before they get it. Only the mildly insane keep going once they realise luck is needed, so mild insanity is a trait that is also needed on most cases.Case study; Elizabeth Holmes. The perfect entrepreneur in fact, except she was low in luck. She just couldn’t attract enough capital to overcome this fact. So she was really unlucky in fact.Oh luck is random by the way. You can’t influence it. People aren’t lucky; lucky is people. The only way you can influence luck is by stacking the game using capital. Rigging, in other words.ps if you could just follow a formula to success, then the owner of the formula wouldn’t be spending their time teaching it for little bickies, they’d be flogging it to highly successful entrepreneurs for a slice of the guaranteed outcome.