Een paar dagen geleden las ik ergens over een mooie nieuwe term die iemand bedacht had: de “nontrepreneur“:
Do you know the guy who always talk about his big ideas but never got around doing it? Or the guy spreads entrepreneurship religiously and read whole lot of business book but never started a real business? Or the guy who always ask you to quit your job and start your own business but never do it himself?
Klinkt herkenbaar? Nou, dat zijn dus de nontrepreneurs!
(lees het artikel trouwens wel even verder, want “as awful as the name might sound, nontrepreneurs are not all bad“).
Evolutie
In reactie op het nontrepreneur-verhaal bedacht ene Uri Schonfeld een complete hierarchie in de evolutie van wannabe entreprenteurs naar succesvolle ondernemers:
- The idea guy: He has tons of ideas, some of them even good. A good idea guy, keeps one of those little notebooks, maybe even some electronic device to keep track of all his ideas. He keeps it very very secret and does absolutely nothing with it. Happily counting them off as others build them and make them popular.
- The Talker a.k.a the Nontrepreneur: He wants to get something going. He wants to find the right partner to somehow get beyond the idea stage. He talks to his friends and they talk back. Maybe they spend a lot of time convincing each other that their ideas are not good enough.
- The starter: The starter picks one of his ideas and starts working on it. Maybe he does a bit of research, writes a design, buys a domain. An advanced Starter may even start implementing something. Eventually the starter will lose interest, get distracted, lose focus and move on.
- The finisher: This guy knows that beginnings will get you nowhere, you need to finish something. He will finish a prototype. He has the focus necessary to stick with something for more than a week. He might be one of these guys that does not want to leave in the middle of a movie even if it makes him physically sick (Cloverfield?). He might even post a link or give it to one of his friends. Eventually, since he built it and they didn’t come, he’ll forget about it.
- The Successful Entrepreneur: All the previous categories were easy, they defined what was missing, what might stop you from being a successful entrepreneur. But what does it take to be a successful entrepreneur? I cannot really say. Maybe it’s having ideas, identifying the good ones, having the focus and determination to start and finish something, getting friends to help you, getting friends to try your product, pushing and pushing, changing the focus when needed… Maybe it’s having a business plan?
Ik switch zelf nog een heen en weer in de eerste drie stappen. Van “the idea guy” (1) naar het uiteenzetten van grootste plannen in de rol als talker/nontrepreneur (2) tot af en toe een voorzichtige, halfbakken start tot uitvoer (3).
Maar eerlijk is eerlijk: ik ben vooral een echte nontrepreneur 
. Maar wel een nontrepreneur die er lol in heeft en er energie uit haalt. Talk the talk, walk the walk? Ja, dat komt later wel.
Of niet.
