When is a good time to be an Entrepreneur?

How often do we hear this at the beginning of our professional career:

This is the right time to be an entrepreneur. It will get more difficult as you grow older because:
  • your responsibilities will be higher & hence your risk taking ability will be lower
  • you would be used to a steady income & hence find it difficult to adjust with varying income
  • your income levels will be higher and so your expectations from the venture will be higher
  • this is your age to learn and entrepreneurship will teach you a lot
  • if you fail now, you have enough time on hand to get back to the job market
  • you will be your own boss and will be able to do what you like
  • you will easily earn more than what your current salary is
  • etc. etc. etc.
Having got 'sold' to this school of thought about 25 years ago,experienced the journey myself and then seen many different entrepreneurship journeys as a Consultant/Advisor to them, I began to wonder whether all of this is true and whether these are the key factors in taking the decision.
 
What I have been able to think through so far is as follows ...
While most of the above may be true in some cases, not everything is true in all the cases. What is absolutely true for all seems to be the follows:
  1. Clearly identified market need & a solution for it.
    Catering to this need should be one's primary goal and it should connect the budding entrepreneur's heart. Often, people make the solution their goal and not the need. Solutions change more frequently than the need and one has to be flexible / adaptable to find solutions that would meet the needs with changes in the market dynamics. More fundamental the market or the need, the more sustainable would be the venture.
  2. A good revenue model for all involved in the value chain
    Not everything can be done by one venture / entrepreneur. Other individuals / enterprises are need to succeed. Good entrepreneurs have an ability to make & keep others interested in their venture by ensuring that there is a healthy revenue model for all.
  3. Enough ware-withal to sustain the gestation periodsFinancial and mental tenacity to see through the gestation & transitions in business are the key to longer term success of an entrepreneurial venture. Expecting some angel / venture fund right from start is like banking on winning a lottery. Hence, either have a revenue stream available right from day 1 or have the ware-withal to sustain the period until which the right revenue model is 'cracked'.
If one takes another frequent heard adage "you have to burn the bridges (take risk) and start somewhere, rest you will figure out" in its literal sense and prioritises the nice-to-have criteria over the essential ones then it will be like putting the 'cart before the horse' or 'looking for the parachute after you've jumped'.
 
In such situations, neither the entrepreneur nor the enterprise gains and people take solace in '2% success formula' i.e. only 2% of all entrepreneur ventures are likely to make it big (not that I subscribe to this formula but respect anyone who has done enough research to come up with it).
 
I wonder if from such experiences, the entrepreneur ever learns the right lessons and whatever one learns whether it is comprehensive enough. I have put my '2 cents' worth of learning 'on-the-blog'. Inviting others with entrepreneurial experience to add theirs so that budding entrepreneurs can draw their learning and take informed decisions about their career.

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