All over the world, people from all walks of life have an entrepreneurial spirit. They have a desire to create something unique and then share it with the world. It can be something to fix a problem that exists, an improvement on a current technology or a completely new idea that no one has eve imagined before. Entrepreneurs have all kinds of ideas and they create all kinds of inventions, products and companies. The truth is probably no two entrepreneurs are exactly alike, although many may possess the same types if skills and training. Many people truly want to become entrepreneurs and they might have some great ideas and assets, but they are still lacking the necessary skills to get it done and become an entrepreneur. So what kinds of skills do entrepreneurs really need in order to become successful?
Raising Entrepreneurs
I spend time with many of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs, and many of these individuals are counted among our clients here at GROCO. One of the world’s most successful venture capitalists and entrepreneurs is Tim Draper, the co-founder of Draper Fisher Jurvetson Venture Fund. Tim has also created the Draper University of Heroes, which is a school designed specifically and especially for budding entrepreneurs. The idea behind Tim’s university is to help those who want to change the world learn how to do it. His school is unlike any other university in the country. Students who attend Draper University learn some of the most important skills that any entrepreneur will need in order to become successful.
What Do You Have to Offer?
Recently Tim spoke about some of those skills. While most people might think that you have to be very technologically savvy to be a successful entrepreneur that is not necessarily the case. However, Tim explained that if you don’t possess those technology skills then you do need to have someone on your team that does. In other words, he said, you have to have a team member that is a builder. There has to be someone that can focus on your product, service or technology and make it happen from a technology standpoint. If you are technologically savvy that skill can help you build a great company. However, it might not be enough to make you a great entrepreneur.
Combining the Best of Both Skill Sets
Tim also says that just because you are a technologist that doesn’t make you a great business person. In other words, most likely you probably can’t do the whole thing by yourself. So Tim encourages entrepreneurs that do have the technology skills to surround themselves with really good business people that can help them with their technology. So in other words, in Tim’s opinion you need to have people who possess both technology skills and business skills in order to succeed. He said very few people have both of these skills, which is why it’s so important for a technologist to find someone that knows business models as well as he or she knows the technology, and vise versa.
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