All Serious Daring

All serious daring starts from within – Eudora Welty, American author Entrepreneurs who have already had one smashing (job- and wealth-creating) success and want to create another one are in short supply everywhere. To my mind, that’s a good thing. It avoids the creation of an aristocracy of entrepreneurs, a conceptual paradox if ever there were one. If, by definition, not every entrepreneur can be a seasoned entrepreneur who has already grown their company to create thousands of jobs, then most entrepreneurs have simply gotta be given their big break. So, the key thing for the entrepreneurial community and its supporters is to have a handle on some good, observable signs that an entrepreneur could be that next high growth, high potential, entrepreneur whose idea and skills are so great that they will grow a company that creates hundreds, even thousands, of jobs. If the signs are there, then holy cow – it’s our job to give them their break (says the preacher to the choir)! What are those observable signs? How about greasy hair, a geeky disposition, propensity to drop-out of college, and a willingness to crush anyone who stands in the way of their dreams – is that good measurable criteria for excellence in entrepreneurship? How about high testosterone? Not only are most venture-backed companies male-led (for brevity, I won't go into a full blown discussion of this topic), but it has been posited (perhaps unreasonably) that the world’s youngest ever billionaire, Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, started Facebook to meet girls.  Alas, the reality of most first time entrepreneurial successes is slightly more prosaic to such hormonal poetry. Top entrepreneurs first and foremost demonstrate excellence. Whether they are young or old, if they do something -- sports, clubs, jobs, hobbies -- they do it well. If they’re young, you can’t see their rising-to-the-top tendency within a company, but you can see this rising-to-the-top attitude at their school or in their hobby. If they majored in Computer Science in college, they didn’t just do their work -- they wrote new programs and won contests or made money with the programs. If they played football, they didn’t just play -- they were captain of their varsity team. They didn’t just do volunteer work, but they started a small non-profit doing something in a way that they believed no other non profit was. If they’re not college-aged and actually have a career history to look at, you can see how this excellence plays out in their career. They don’t just work at a company, but they do their job with excellence, achieving results, growing business units, and gaining increasing nationally significant influence as they move through their career.  Secondly, top entrepreneurs’ excellence is observably adaptable. This proven flexibility/adaptability is a signature trait of entrepreneurs. Myself, I always look for three points of adaptable excellence. Why? One point is just a point; two points is better -- it’s a line; three points is best because it makes a plane. Three points of excellence shows not just excellence but adaptable excellence. So, can you look at their accomplishments and see three points of adaptable excellence? I have found this rule of thumb to be surprisingly predictive, and in fact we did a pretty deep analysis at JumpStart that bore out that this rule of thumb is worthwhile. However, I also believe that everything’s contextual. So, for instance, if I come across a college-age entrepreneur, I am definitely willing to take just one or two points of excellence and extrapolate that there’s good adaptability there. If I weren’t, then my fabulous theory would, I think, have me miss out on Bill Gates, Michael Dell, and hundreds of the world's most successful entrepreneurs. Similarly, if I come across a first generation immigrant, I give them one point of excellence simply for being a first generation immigrant.  When you add in this contextual element, then this concept of adaptable excellence sounds brutally obvious. I mean, who’s looking for adaptable mediocrity? Don’t we all look for adaptable excellence when we financially back someone, partner with them, work for them, or hire them? What I would say is that when you actually put it to the test, the quest for true nationally significant excellence (true rising to the top at whatever someone does) and proven, multi-point adaptability takes one along a narrow and non-obvious path. Along this narrow and non-obvious path, what you discover is that great entrepreneurship may show itself in a variety of forms, contexts, and phenotypes -- immigrant, school teacher, child genius, college drop-out, periodic wife, charming geek, and more. But, true to Eudora Welty’s quote, its inner drive is always initiative and daring. And if you were to translate this initiative and daring into a resume of these individuals and most great entrepreneurs, then nine times out of ten, it would very early on -- before the successes truly started rolling in -- look like the more boring but eminently more observable concept of adaptable excellence.  So, adaptable excellence, it matters. Because those people who show adaptable excellence (e.g., Sergey Brin, Pleasant Rowland, Thomas Edison, Michael Dell, Estee Lauder, and Bill Gates) build great companies, like Google, American Girl, GE, Dell Computer, Estee Lauder, and Microsoft. They constitute the constantly replenished meritocracy of great entrepreneurs, and in turn, the constantly replenished growth and wealth of our nation and in these trying times, hopefully, our world. Becca Braun is a past president of JumpStart Ventures. She founded and led a number of early-stage companies and organizations, as well as worked as a private equity investor and management consultant. She received her MBA from Harvard Business School and her BA in Linguistics from Harvard University. She is keenly interested in the intersection of wealth creation and broad-based regional economic growth.