In my view, being an Entrepreneur means going on a journey, really, a Quest, in search of some combination of riches, wisdom and purpose. The entrepreneur begins the quest with a clear goal, but without the resources and often without a clear idea of how they will reach that goal. Observers may consider them crazy or foolish, because few would embark on a path that could so easily fail. Entrepreneurs are willing to take the risk of failure, but to some extent are blind to it. Where others worry about the 70% chance of failure, the entrepreneur is excited by a 30% probability of success.
The Entrepreneurial Quest is not just a simple trip that you can book on Travelocity. It is a journey broken down into stages and like the model in folk lore in almost every culture, each stage is preceded by a test or trial that must be passed to continue on the journey. Many may smile or be surprised by this statement, but a hard look at how entrepreneurs start and build companies reveals this recurring pattern -- stages, milestones, critical steps or trials in the way they build their enterprises. Later, we will describe a common pattern of entrepreneurial stages, but before we do, we need to put the quest in perspective.
Warning
If you embark on an entrepreneurial quest, you must be prepared for failure and the kind of failure that changes your life. You must, in fact, pass each of the tests to complete the journey. If you cannot pass a test, your quest is over. It is as simple as that. You can try again and again, but you may run out of resources or time or patience. When the quest ends early you cannot necessarily go home because “The Quest” changes you – forever. Embarking on a real quest is a life changing experience. It may be that entrepreneurs realize that even a failed quest is still a valuable life experience.
The general framework of this blog is to look at the entrepreneurial journey, characterize the different phases and tests and then examine how the movement of the entrepreneur and the entrepreneurial company must transform itself to manage through these phases.
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