Can I Be an Entrepreneur?
I went to an entrepreneur pitch competition that was held at CERN a few weeks ago. It was a fascinating event, especially from the eyes of a complete neophyte like me. I have been adding to my long-term plans the possibility of starting my own company, even if I am completely ignorant of and intimidated by entrepreneurship. Several projects presented at the competition were well-advanced: some even had working prototypes. I found myself wondering where these people found the time and opportunity to work on something that was clearly their own.
Several of the competitors found their motivation and dedication in working on a humanitarian or environmental problem. One presented better and cheaper body bags that would greatly prolong the duration for which victims of a natural disaster can be identified. Another presented how you can cheaply outfit trained dogs with monitoring equipment to make them more effective in de-mining operations. A third competitor presented a platform that would assist people in becoming entrepreneurs, hoping to help alleviate the high unemployment rate of young adults in Europe. These enterprises are noble and well worth pursuing. Nevertheless, they were all met with the same question: how are you going to make your business sustainable?
It’s a question that makes a lot of sense on one hand, but really doesn’t on the other. It makes sense that a company that makes a product needs to be sustainable. I wouldn’t want to invest in something that wouldn’t generate any revenue… or would I? What if it’s worth it nonetheless? Why would addressing humanitarian problem be contingent on a robust business plan? Does the monitoring equipment outfitting the de-mining dogs really have to be turned into a consumer toy used to annoy your domestic companions in order to sustain the nobler goal? I realize there is a difference between a company and a non-profit, or an investment and a donation. But the judges of the competition never brought the distinction up. Some of the competing companies were clearly destined to be non-profits organizations, and it would have been a nice and encouraging thing to mention that they may have a future as such.
There are a lot of hard and disheartening problems in the world that require solutions that can’t easily be monetized. This is maybe, the greatest challenge of our modern economy. The entrepreneur pitch competition left me with the strong impression that it’s not the motivation or the creativity that is missing when it comes to solving world problems. It’s the money. If you can’t make the money yourself, where should it come from? Are there better models out there than non-profits and governmental organizations? The former usually depends too much on the public’s attention span, while the latter usually struggles to get sufficient resources to really solve the problem it targets. A self-sustaining company is one solution, but it is hardly applicable to all problems of the world.
On the flip-side, there are many ideas that do not contribute in the betterment of humanity that are simply too easy to monetize. I’m not going to give examples of what I mean, cause I would clearly anger some people. Plus, what’s valuable and useful is clearly subjective… Ahh ok, I can’t help it! I think we can do without most reality TV, casinos, tobacco products and wine. And golf. If you don’t agree, you get my point.
The case has been made that the current start-up boom in Silicon Valley is caused by the realization that a simple phone app can generate millions, if not billions of dollars if it uses the right monetization scheme. All you got to do is to keep people using your app. Some apps sell advertisement space, others “offer” in-app purchases. It now appears lame and cheap to have to pay to get the app itself. Nobody wants to pay for something they can’t try, that’s just the way the app market is.
It’s a recipe that’s being reused over and over again because it works. At least for a while. People almost invariably lose interest and move on to the next thing. How many of these app-based startups are actually sustainable in the long-term (They don’t get asked that one question do they)? They deploy sophisticated data analysis to study customer behavior in order to generate addiction, often instead of relying on a real consistent need to get the customers to come back. Facebook exploits social psychology to get us to look at that feed whenever we’re bored, and Farmville exploits reward psychology to keep us working on expanding that virtual farm. I’m not saying that Facebook doesn’t fulfill real needs and functions, but the basis of its billion-dollar-success is still the exploitation of our deep natural instinct for gossiping.
I want to be an entrepreneur and make something worthwhile. I want to live off of what I do, while having the freedom to explore ideas that excite me. Those two goals are conflicting to a scaring degree. Only a really, really good idea can resolve that conflict. This requires time and exploration. I don’t have a lot of free time unfortunately, since I need to sustain myself and have a full-time job. It’s even worse that my job is academic. This lack of free time is to some extent what prevents me from realizing what I believe to be my true potential. It is also a genuine barrier to class mobility at the level of society that has nothing to do with education level.
I genuinely wish there was a way to lift that barrier which isn’t based on luck. I’m willing, even excited to put in the hard work, I just need an opportunity to do so, and I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one in this situation. It’s silly to think that to start a successful company, all you need is smarts and hard-work. Maybe an awful lot of people never try because it seems so hard. They don’t believe they are smart or hard-working enough while in reality, they just never had the opportunity to try and convince themselves they can.
