It took me almost 20 years to understand what kind of entrepreneur I was and how to make that work for me.
I’m not talking about mysticism and philosophy here. These are not Myers-Briggs personality tests. This is about correctly applying your skills to your craft.
I spent most of the beginning of my career thinking I wasn’t going to be good at entrepreneurship because I wasn’t like the entrepreneurs I read about or worked with. Then I spent a few years after that trying to be someone I wasn’t. All that did was make entrepreneurship and my job a lot harder than it needed to be.
Once you know how you identify with the entrepreneurial spirit, you will approach every problem, every decision, and every initiative in a way that you are good at. In fact, you will approach the growth of your company from a new perspective.
It’s critical for startup founders and leaders to know how they operate, but it’s equally important to identify all the types of entrepreneurs you have in your company. Then you’ll understand what their motivation is and, more importantly, how they operate.
Then you can get everyone working together toward the same goals.
These are the five basic types of entrepreneurs that I have encountered time and time again. They are not all of them, and of course, each person is a little different, but it is a good start.
I am a problem/solution entrepreneur. But more specifically, I am a solution-seeking entrepreneur.
Yes, in a sense, every entrepreneur identifies a problem and invents a solution, but that doesn’t make every entrepreneur a solution-first entrepreneur.
I can identify, right now, about a hundred big problems with huge total achievable markets (TAMs) attached to them. And I think I can pick a dozen of those problems and outline what I think are viable, affordable, achievable solutions to each problem. I can probably scrape together the funding to bring at least one of those solutions to market.
I’m not going to do any of that, because that’s not how I work. I used to think I was lazy or apathetic. Then I realized that that kind of business strategy is for a different kind of entrepreneur, and it’s not me.
The difference is that a solution-first entrepreneur isn’t interested in proposing a solution, they’re interested in proposing THE solution. Solution-first means that the solution solves a problem in a way that completely changes the scope of the process that’s causing the problem. The solution can then be applied to other problems, in other processes, for other people, in other settings.
The solution-first entrepreneur is the type who has to be careful not to invent a solution in search of a problem. They also have to know, understand, and love the problem enough to be able to extrapolate it anywhere and everywhere.
That’s why I’m so interested in products and innovation and customer-oriented development and experimentation. I’m constantly creating and testing new hypotheses.
This approach can drive other types of entrepreneurs crazy. Remember what I said about hundreds of problems with huge total possible markets?
The type of entrepreneur who identifies a set of problems, picks one, and finds a new solution for it is what I call an opportunity entrepreneur.
This type of entrepreneur follows technical and business trends, and they do so either actively or passively, meaning they may be in a field that requires this type of approach, or they may simply be very aware of what’s around them.
Typically, they choose the problem to solve not because of their affinity with it, but because of whether or not they believe the solution is worth the effort. In other words, there’s a little money chasing here, or maybe a lot of it.
A good number of opportunity entrepreneurs are MBAs, people who are more in love with business than most of us. And these entrepreneurs, more often than not, are more likely to find funding and actually solve the problem they have set out to solve.
The only thing that can trip them up is when the solution becomes more complicated or painful or requires more sacrifice than they are willing to commit to. This happens when the problem turns out to be much bigger than they first assumed. If they have some lack of passion for the process, their motivation to find the solution diminishes as the potential reward diminishes.
Opportunity entrepreneurs need to stay motivated. They need to keep their eyes on the prize.
These are what we think of as technical founders, but you don’t have to be a low-level coder to be a technical innovator. In fact, I started my career as a technical innovator, became increasingly technical, and then realized that low-level technology was best left to the coders.
Technical innovators are obsessed with technology and immersed enough in it to notice when there is a low-level opportunity to do things faster, better, or bring the benefits of technology to a broader audience. They invent new ways to do those low-level technical tasks that have huge implications at a higher level.
The question is often: What are these huge implications? And at what level?
Technical innovators are usually paired with someone who can answer that question by producing the low-level technology and scaling it. Technical innovators who don’t need to be paired become the technical founders. I was a technical founder for a long time and started a lot of projects that didn’t last because I didn’t think I needed help on either the technical or business side.
Technical innovators need that help at some point, just as the non-technical entrepreneur needs technical help.
This type of entrepreneur may stumble when he’s bringing a new product to market, but once he does, he’s off and running. Entrepreneurship isn’t just about making. That’s R&D. Entrepreneurship is ultimately about selling what you make.
This type of entrepreneur typically starts with an existing product or service and finds a new use case or market for it. They land and expand, then build an Amazon-like machine around it.
Just as the technical innovator doesn’t have to be a coder, the sales entrepreneur may never have worked as a salesperson. They may be good at it.
Getting back to doing what you’re good at: can you imagine a sales entrepreneur trying to build a company being a coder, or the low-level coder making sales calls? Even taking the stereotypical nonsense out of this, it’s just a huge waste of time for both sides.
On the other hand, can you imagine the power of putting an opportunity entrepreneur, a technical innovator, and a sales entrepreneur on the same founding team? Or even replacing the opportunity entrepreneur with a solution-first entrepreneur.
This is how you drive to success.
There is one more type to talk about. The industry innovator is hard to find because they are usually locked away in some cushy job at some big corporation, doing a thankless job that keeps an entire area of that company from collapsing.
When you find them, they are very valuable, because when they emerge, it is usually because they have an idea to try something that has already proven to be viable, valuable and scalable. They just need to remove all the corporate layers.
Now, this is easier said than done. But here’s why it’s so necessary. The industry innovator knows a lot about a lot of things within their industry. They know how products are made and sold, they know where the talent is, they know who the customers are, and they know how to navigate politics.
What they usually don’t know is how to replace all the infrastructure stuff their coworkers waste a ton of time and money doing wrong.
If that is the case, then this type of entrepreneur should be paired with another entrepreneur who has solid startup experience. The counterpart needs to know when to push the accelerator, how to navigate when moving at faster than corporate speeds, and also likely set many levels of caution, concern, and worry as the startup starts to go fast.
Learn what kind of entrepreneur you are and how you operate. Because when you understand how an entrepreneur operates, especially when that entrepreneur is you, you get more done, waste less time, take more risks, and make better decisions.