Would you sell your first baby? If you are a serial entrepreneur, that’s what you have to do. To be a serial entrepreneur, you have to create at least one successful venture and then go on to create more.
You have to be the kind of person who loves living on the edge, and revels in emotions like terror, joy, and even greed. In his biography Confessions of a Serial Entrepreneur, Stuart Skorman talks about how he created and sold businesses, and then created some more. A former 1960s hippie-turned-dot-com mogul, Skorman launched the online video store Reel.com in 1997 and sold it three years later for US$ 100 million. He went on to create several other companies, earning and losing millions of dollars in the process.
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Anurag Batra |
Not everyone is a Skorman or a maverick like him. The thing about being a serial entrepreneur is that your previous success or even failures have no bearing on making the next one a success. According to Skorman, a serial entrepreneur should not be afraid of making mistakes – so long as the focus is on learning from those mistakes and moving ahead. Also, a serial entrepreneur should not tie his/her ego with one decision; instead, he/she should always be willing to do what is right for the business.
A first-time, first-generation entrepreneur is in love with his/her first venture. It’s like a first love, or a first child, and the thrill and feeling of engaging with this form of entrepreneurship is high and of a different class. Breaking this relationship can be tough; moving on can be tougher.
But the moot point is, can an entrepreneur easily sell his/her first venture? If you ask me, as of today (from my personal experience and where I am coming from), the answer is a ‘no’, and it is definitely a difficult mental and emotional challenge. To let go anything that you value is tough, but to let go something that you created from scratch, and which becomes your identity, your soul, and also your calling card, is tougher. However, smart entrepreneurs know that only if you monetize what you have created can you pursue your hobbies and passions.
What if the enterprise of an entrepreneur is a result of his or her pursuing a passion or hobby? It is an intriguing question, but I believe that I have an idea about the answer. While entrepreneurs are passionate about their products, especially those born out of pursuing their interests and hobbies, they have a greater need to satisfy the urge to create something new and bigger, and create new pinnacles of success. This could be in the form of a new venture, free from the baggage and errors of the past ones.
I believe that a person can either be a worker or an entrepreneur. Let me explain that: a person is inherently either a worker, which means that he/she finds comfort in working for a steady pay check, and does not have the desire of going off the beaten track and trying something new. Alternatively, a person is an entrepreneur or a pioneer who will try to create something new. If the first attempt fails, he/she will try again and again, until he/she succeeds, or is no longer able to take such risks (meaning thereby that is risk-taking appetite is full). Success is addictive – and once an entrepreneur tastes success, there is no going back, and one will want to taste it again and again.
A serial entrepreneur understands that it is not the venture that one is passionate about – it is success. A successful enterprise sold by an entrepreneur is success; starting new ventures to build new enterprises is success. As Carl Zetie\ once said “He’s a serial entrepreneur. Somebody stop him before he makes a killing again.” It is a road less traveled, and not for the faint of heart, but for those who are addicted to it, the returns are worth the risk.
Anurag Batra is real life, first-generation entrepreneur who is Much Below Average (MBA) from the prestigious Management Development Institute, MDI. When he is not busy writing such columns, he can be reached at anuragbatrayo@gmail.com.
Anurag is the founder and editor-in-chief of exchange4media group which includes exchange4media.com.
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