Hello,
Blog number two... here we go :) As my idea is to write them as a sort of series, it might be good to read my first blog if you want to follow the red line, you can find it here.
Why do we need entrepreneurs, and what is an intrapreneur?
Last time I told you about when I co-founded my first company, this time I will give you a little bit more background on my view of entrepreneurship and why I think that entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs* are an important part of our society. Right here, and right now a lot of changes are going on, and to be a bit more precise - a lot of companies are trying to evolve, make better products, better solutions and earn more money. Entreprenurs and intrapreneurs makes this possible.
Money is a way to measure how well your solution fits the market - but it is usually not the reason behind why a great idea or solution becomes reality
For many entreprenurs money is not what makes them get up in the morning – it is something else.
A good entrepreneur makes money, in Sweden though, that is actually not even always a good thing due to something called jante**. I my opinion though you do not need to be a less skilled entrepreneur even if you would end up with nothing one or a few times - you at least had the courage to try something you believed in.
“An engineer, heavy industry worker or architect - those are real jobs”
It took me many years before I considered myself to be an entrepreneur, even though that is the only title I should have had since I was 16. An engineer, heavy industry worker or architect those were “real jobs” in my eyes, but an entrepreneur – not so much back then. I’ve met a lot of entrepreneurs and while I cannot speak for all of them my summary would be that most of them do not chase money. Money for me is a great way to show myself that I made something that someone else can see value in. I create more value for them than the money I charge for my service or product, that is a good foundation for a long term cooperation between two companies.
Even though I care a lot about people around me, and sometimes have almost too much of an interest in their life - I will admit that I am an egoist when it comes to the reasons why I am an entrepreneur. I work hard because I want to solve a problem in a better way than others have done before me, or just erase the problem alltogehter with a new way of looking at it. The bigger the challenge, the more interested I get.
I get my kicks out of showing everyone (that doubt me, at least in my in my imagination ;) and myself) that it is possible to create great products and services with limited resources, and actually make them attractive enough so that companies all over the world will want to pay for them every month. Yes, I am talking about HappyBooking now - but the same thought applied in earlier companies of mine as well.
But going back to why I started this blog, I believe that most entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs are not primarily out there to make the maximum amount of money. With this blog I hope to change the view of these people. Many great intrapreneurs make better products and processes in all types of organizations and large companies. These usually have a direct or indirect great positive impact on the wellbeing of others.
A few of the really successful entrepreneurs makes a lot of money as well. The largest part of the revenue usually goes back to paying salaries to employees needed for their survival and continuous progress, and investments into trying new products and solutions – some succeed and become new hits, but most of them usually won’t.
The challenge can, and usually will change
Right now, where we are with HappyBooking, the todo-list in my Todoist that stretches so far that I need to scroll for a good bit just to get an overview. The “big picture” is not what comes up first in my mind every morning.
Today it felt good to think about how I jumped on this to beat a challenge I set out for myself. To make a really good hotel management system for hotels and hostels worldwide. But to be honest, in reality that was not the main challenge at all. Today our metrics show us that we are great when it comes to getting new client to sign up after we’ve made a demonstration of our product. And the clients that sign up won’t drop off – so churn is low as well.
The real challenge in reality is to get potential clients (or prospects) interested enough to spend 15 minutes with us, so that we can show them the product properly. And another challenge that we did not expect was the time it takes for a new client to actually be up and running. These are the problems that we are trying to solve as a company, right now.
Until next time,
(Todoist - try this tool out, I give them some free advertisement here because I really like it!)
*my none at all scientific definition: entrepreneurs that got “stuck” in a large company or organization while having the same will to create new things and make current products, services or processes better.
** Best explained here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Jante
/Thomas
