Becoming an entrepreneur

The following is an excerpt from a samvaad (dialogue) session with Acharya Prashant.

Question: How to be a good entrepreneur?

Acharya Prashant: Entrepreneurship is about initiating something, right? Doing something, beginning something. Before you become a good entrepreneur, must you not ask what is worth doing? Or is entrepreneurship merely about collecting profits rather than salaries?

To many people that is the definition of entrepreneurship. One says, “I was an employee, I used to have a limited salary. Now, I’m an entrepreneur, I can collect much bigger profits. I was an employee, I used to be humiliated by my boss. Now, as an entrepreneur, I can humiliate as many employees as I want to. I was an employee, I belong to an industry that would use fear and greed to compel and defraud its customers. Now, as an entrepreneur, I’m making my employees do exactly the same thing, probably even on a bigger scale.”

Such entrepreneurship is just a continuation of what one has been for a very long time. One has been greedy, insecure, ambitious, fearful, accumulative, possessive. And all of that finds a big expression in the act of entrepreneurship.

One used to compete with his colleagues. Now, one is competing with the other companies in his industry. One is an entrepreneur now. And even before one was…