The Two Kinds of Entrepreneurs Who Make It Big

The first kind will never be you

To all of the Millennials out there, by a show of hands, who doesn’t aspire to be an entrepreneur? We all saw The Social Network. We all know a friend-of-a-friend who left their corporate job and started a company and raised some investor money. We all see the social media posts from some young entrepreneur, the whimsical photos in exotic locations with taglines about freeing yourself and making your dreams come true. If you want to be a successful entrepreneur, the kind who doesn’t burn through all of their personal savings and the money raised in their FFF Round (Friends, Family, and Fools), you have two options. Actually, you have one option.

There are two kinds of entrepreneurs who make it: Moonshots, who invent a new category that taps into a massive unfulfilled need in the consumer market, and Snipers, who see a small but profitable need in an industry they have spent time gaining a deep understanding of and aligned the necessary resources to exploit. You will never be a Moonshot, so don’t even bother.

But you can decide today to dedicate yourself to an industry rife with problems and take time learning where those gaps are and crafting ideas of how to exploit them.

That’s no guarantee you’ll succeed on your own, but there are worse ways to spend your life helping the world solve meaningful problems and this is your best chance to have a shot at the title. You won’t learn how to do this by reading a lot of business books or whiteboarding ideas or traveling to India to take LSD and embrace the oneness of mankind. You will learn it by getting into your chosen industry on the ground level, getting your hands dirty and keeping your eyes open.

Go make the world a better place, kid.