What is the Entrepreneurial Mindset?
Collection of Answers from Boston College students and alums
Professor Rita Owens — Business Communication
“Great. Well, for me, I was writing some words down beforehand since I knew you were going to ask this question, so I’m going to read a few that came to mind right away? Innovation. Forward motion. Disruption. Agents. Open mindedness. All of those things to me. I also want to tell students who are thinking about it, it doesn’t necessarily have to be a new product. You can be an entrepreneur in any field you go into. It’s having the ability to think broadly and open mindedly even about existing processes. That’s what entrepreneurs do. There are so many entrepreneurs in business who are in big businesses, and they are the reasons we see major change. There has been a lot of study about disruption theory, and there is a belief that you can’t really do it inside an existing organization. You have to create a new one to do that, but that doesn’t mean people don’t come from inside with prior knowledge. So for me that mindset has changed. You can have a really great career being a change agent wherever you are.”
Professor Kaiser — Entrepreneurial Law
“I think it’s twofold. A lot of entrepreneurs have a lot of grit. Those who are very successful, they know how to turn a no into a yes and that requires a lot of persistence and passion. The most successful entrepreneurs are often those who can incorporate feedback into the way they’re operating, pitching, and presenting a product to market. That’s the second fold of what that mindset means. Those who are too staunch in some of that grit, I find have a harder time growing. It’s something that I used to use in some of my sales pitches when I was building startups. Strong opinions loosely held. I don’t know if you know, but the Saint Louis arch is strongly planted in the ground but actually sways slightly in the wind. I think that that’s exactly how it needs to be: malleable. Otherwise it would become a structure that would be much more easily destroyed. Entrepreneurs should operate in the same vein. They should have really strong opinions and know how to present those opinions, but ultimately be able to lean on other experts, advisors, attorneys and other general customer feedback to continue to grow their idea. Yeah, I think those two things.”
Trent Tully (Class of ’23) — Founder of Venu
“I think for me it’s just about doing the nitty gritty. If you have a dream, follow it. I know for us this (Venu) is a dream that I had since January of last year, and since then I’ve gotten more and more passionate about it. It wasn’t just a honeymoon phase. Now I’m almost married to the idea, and I think the entrepreneurial mindset is doing things differently than people do traditionally. For example, I come from Massachusetts, not a crazy upbringing or anything like that, but making it crazy. For entrepreneurs as a whole, when everyone else hears it as crazy, seeing it as not crazy and proving people wrong. I used to wear a bracelet growing up that my sister got for me for Christmas one year and it said Prove People Wrong. That’s something I live a lot of my life by. Even if people have negative thoughts about me, just proving those wrong and showing like this is what I’m capable of. In terms of the mindset as a whole, as cliche as it sounds, I like to look at everything glass half full. I have my moments where you look at everything and you are a bit gloomy. Those times you are not making progress. But at the end of the day, I like to wake up and find something positive about it. And this (Venu) is my positive. Finding your positives is one of the biggest things you can do. That’s what I think the entrepreneurial mindset is all about.”
Ted Wind (Class of ’25) — Founder of Socion
“To me the entrepreneurial mindset means just going for it and taking risks. I’ll say you definitely need a little bit of naivete and almost have stubborn confidence to be like, my thing is going to work. You have to believe in what you’re doing because if you don’t believe, it’s not going to work out. Again going back to the Aryeo guys, because I’ve learned a lot from them. One of their big things was that they had no idea that there were a bunch of competitors that existed in the space early on. Later they admitted that if they had known that, they probably wouldn’t have started the company. Yeah, there might be other people trying to do it, but you have to believe you can do it better. Having the stubbornness and confidence within yourself to be like, yeah, I can do it. I think it is also really important to be surrounded by a bunch of people that have a similar drive and mindset to want to create something out of nothing: bringing something new into the world. It’s just so exciting and invigorating. It’s a community I’m really proud to be a part of.”
Jay Wadhwa (Class of ’24) — Co-founders of Split
“To me it means you have to go with the flow. You really never know what is going to happen tomorrow, maybe not even what is going to happen in an hour. Sometimes we will be in class and the next thing you know we will have the app down for X,Y, Z reasons which may be an issue we have never come across. But that makes it a fun process. We get to go in to look what went wrong and how we can fix it. You just don’t know what you are going to wake up to the next day which is definitely a very stressful thing, but on top of that, you learn a lot. It’s a really fun process not knowing what is ahead of you. That’s what the entrepreneurial mindset means to me.”
Jorge Dickens (Class of ’24) — Co-founders of Split
“Everyday is different. What entrepreneurs are able to do throughout the day is find opportunities: making little improvements everyday. That reflects what Jay and I did. Specifically for restaurants and splitting the bill, we were able to actually sit back and think about it. It’s just about the thinking aspect and questioning things. You need to question everyday aspects. When the opportunity comes, you can then add value. Essentially, just being on your toes and taking the initiative.”
Zarah Lakhani (Class of ’24) — Co-founder of Vitaliti
“To me it means using everything as an opportunity. We have been incredibly blessed and gifted to be able to have such amazing opportunities and be able to gain so much traction so quickly. I think that’s something that we’ve realized that every challenge we overcome, every mistake we make, anything is just a learning opportunity. That’s what we’re trying to focus on. Recognizing that and being able to realize that like, okay, this is what this is what happened, but this is what we’re going to take from it. I think also a goal of our company is providing empathy for the user and focusing on a user focused product, which is easy for people to use, gives them quick, effective, fast results, and provides them with the data that can really help their health and well-being. That is the core mission behind our whole company and our team.”
Jack Russel (Class of ’23) — CEO of MCEE
“The term entrepreneurial mindset means to me is just constantly thinking about every single question in life in an entrepreneurial way. How could I solve this problem? Or how can I make the solution better? I often find myself now being a first time entrepreneur, constantly being like, Oh, that could be a business right there, or if you do this, this way and you get these customers, you can make money right there. I never used to think of it that way. It was really interesting when I started viewing things like that. I also just view everything more creatively, more imaginatively, and more flexible. I think that’s what the entrepreneurial mindset is. Not that everything is going to go right because you’re definitely going to have many setbacks. You constantly have to pivot as a founder, but the ability to keep going for it, keep trying, keep being creative and just trying your best to get your solution out there and whatever way possible.”
Mattew Giovanniello (Class of ’18) — CEO of Fenalytics
“The term entrepreneurial mindset to me means having an open mindset where you can consider a number of different opinions from people, and then being able to act on those in a rational manner while also thinking about the future of whatever it is you have in mind in the future of a particular company, the future of you and your entrepreneurial journey, whatever it might be. And taking things into consideration that will help you get there. I know it’s a little bit broad and maybe a little bit too theoretical, but I think the joy of being an entrepreneur is that you get to explore all these things that there may not be a built out path or dug out path to use. So entrepreneurs sometimes need to build that for themselves. Taking in all of those externalities, all those factors, all the information they can get that will help them make an educated guess as to how to get there. There’s no guarantees, so I think it requires a lot of conviction, a lot of passion, and a little bit of craziness perhaps in thinking that you’re going to be able to get it done. If you know too much information that might dissuade you. Having a little bit of naivete might help.”
Peter Bell (Class of ’86) — Investor with Amity Ventures
“The entrepreneur mindset is one focused on how to build something important. And what I mean is it is important to the people who use it, the customers, important to the employees that decide to go work, and it’s important to the investors if they decide to raise money. It’s really that kind of growth mindset around making an impact and that they are going to be talent magnets. I think that’s the most difficult and most important thing for an entrepreneur because they have to have other folks help them on their journey and garnering talent and those special resources is extremely difficult. So the mindset we’re looking for is one that’s going to attract talent no matter how good or bad the economy is. That is always going to be the most important attribute when we think about the entrepreneurial mindset.”
