Am I a Serial Entrepreneur?
There is a great article with the above title over at trizle.com. In particular, the part about “serial entrepreneurs” struck a chord in me. From the article:
Contrast serial entrepreneurs with those ‘long-term’ ones.
Who’s thriving like a mofo?
The ones who built on top of their experiences, then exploited those advantages every-single-frickin’-day.
Oh snap! Could I be one of these guys who starts something new every six months, sees little to no success and then spends blood, sweat and tears building another failure instead of building on top of the hard lessons I’ve already learned?
Take a project of mine for example, drinkshirt.com. This project is all but a wash at this point. My tendency is to throw a wake for it, say some unclean things about why it did not work out and then move on to something else. But what if I looked back at this and gleaned from the wreckage some much needed education? I might learn stuff like:
- Don’t put all your eggs in one basket (or API in beta)
- Outsourcing development can be affordable and fast
- Your intended audience is not always who you will attract (Japanese coffee drinkers in this case)
- Quality links are way more effective than advertising
These ideas and more would be applied to my next project. Having learned these lessons already, I can focus more time on innovation and less time on the nuts and bolts of the above issues.
This article has also got me thinking about how quick I am to shelve projects. Sure, some are ideas that just never got off the ground, but in cases like drinkshirt.com, have I done everything I can to make this project a success? Is there any way I can adjust even the model of this project in such a way that makes it profitable to me and the community? These, friends, are the questions that plague me. Now go read that article.
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Great post, I agree. I think a great addition that might help others would be learning how to outsource. It’s really helped my business. I found a free outsourcing mini coarse and I learned a lot from it. It’s amazing what you can do when you can hire someone for $4 per hour to help you run your business.
http://virtualadministrativeassistant.info/minicourse/index.html