Mediums largest publication isThe Startup, with more than 700,000 followers.
Hundreds of thousands of people who want to change the world in a myriad of ways.
Hundreds of thousands of people with a vision and the motivation to work for it.
Hundreds of thousands of people who want to reinvent things.
Entrepreneurs, so the story goes, are a rare species.
Most people just dont find the discomfort and the risk of failure too attractive, the story says.
Yet more than half a million people are right here, reading The Startup.
People who want to make it, in business and in life.
It’s free, every week, in your inbox.
More and more people are joining the conversation.
Can all these people make it?
Can so many people change the world in a million different ways?
Entrepreneurs could weaken existing businesses
Startups are the growth motor of todays economy or so were taught.
Its through disruption and innovation that we can impact peoples lives today and in the future.
Thats what they say.
From this viewpoint, it comes as no surprise that incentives to launch something new are seemingly everywhere.
Why would companies want to teach their employees how to leave and start their own venture?
The reason, according to adecade-old piece inthe New York Times, is linked to companies hiring strategy.
Of course, it depends on each individual situation.
Had their founders had less motivation to do what they did, what would our world today look like?
The former will keep existing companies performing at their best.
The latter helps build the companies of the future.
Onecould concludethat it might harm the economy if more startups are founded.
This conclusion is logical, but in my opinion short-sighted.
Of course, most startups wont be very productive in the first few years after their creation.
But that doesnt mean that building a startup is a waste of resources.
The investment of today is the gain of tomorrow.
Some entrepreneurs rode their first couple of ventures against the wall before succeeding.
Others again abandoned a successful business because they feared that it wouldnt work out.
If that sounds scary to you, youre not alone.
Even in the United States, failure is regarded as something bad.
For many people, its something that ought to be avoided.
But thats not true.
Failure and success dont need to be opposites.
Entrepreneursoften viewthem as cause and effect.
you’re gonna wanna fail to succeed later.
The only important thing is not to give up.
Use a failure to dig deeper, and come back stronger.
However inspiring that sounds, it is no common mindset.
Even among entrepreneurs, youll need to search to find people who think and act this way.
The VC bubble has been looming for decades
Building a startup means taking a risk.
On a personal level, that means embracing failure.
Thats what venture capital, in its simplest terms, is all about.
You throw money at one hundred people with crazy ideas and watch 98 people lose it all.
You still get considerable capital gains from the couple of people who succeed and bring home enormous returns.
Some people, includingsome authorsat The Startup, have been pointing their fingers at this kind of system.
What happened to the good old bootstrapped company whose first goal was profitability?
I admit that there is quitesome sensationalismaround twenty-year-old founders raising millions of cash.
However, I would argue that the issue isnt as deep as it initially seems.
Well-informed investors and entrepreneurs know the statistics beyond the headlines.
Weve been speaking about a potential VC bubble for decades.
Have we had that kind of rare success?
Think about Amazon, Apple, or Google for a split second.
Will we have this kind of success in the future?
Lets say that there are enough market opportunities!
Entrepreneurs or Wantrepreneurs?
Of course, its in our interest to bring over the fascination and inspiration that abounds among entrepreneurs.
Of course, tacky headlines have their role in that game, too.
But we shouldnt give a shot to attract people that arent fit for the job.
We shouldnt make people believe that young college dropouts with a couple of PowerPoint slides can become millionaires overnight.
In other words, we should be incentivizing entrepreneurs, and not wantrepreneurs.
Its easy to say that all headlines are fake and all successful entrepreneurs are immoral.
Yet there are manyamazing founderstoday who all aim to make the world a slightly better place.
The status quo isnt perfect; I think we can all agree on that.
But I dont think the current imperfections come from having too much entrepreneurial spirit around.
Rather, we should be focusing on cultivating the right entrepreneurial mindsets.
I dont think that were misleading an entire generation into pursuing hopeless businesses.
If many of them experience failures, those might serve as lessons on how to get successful later on.
If Mediums The Startup boasts hundreds of thousands of followers, that isnt a cause for concern.
This article was originally published on Medium.
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