I think regardless which questions you are talking about, in which aspect your are looking at it,you can always divide the world into 2.
And when it comes to people who want to live their passion, I can see of them: the Mark (Zuckerberg) and the Steve (Wozniak).
The Mark, aka the Visionaries, are people who have a true believe and want to impact the world. They might start developing product and love it, but what really passionate them is the change their product can bring. In the start-up world, we call them the husler. You have to talk to a lot of people, refine your idea, your vision, communicate a lot, spread the word. And you need to be your own leader. You will have mentors for sure, but you are making you own road. They will focus on spreading their vision.
The Steve, aka. the Builders, are truly passionate by the product, they love doing what they do but are not that interested in leading people, managing a team. Most of the time they think talking with people is a waste of time they could spend developing, improving their product. That is what they love doing. The Steve also will have mentor, but it will be more technical mentor, training them on the new technology. They also love community of builders like them. But given them the choice, they would not want to start their own company because they don’t want to waste time in administrative stuff, recruiting a team, doing marketing, fundraising. They would prefer to have someone else doing all that (a company or a co-founder) while they can focus on building.
iWeekend is for both Mark and Steve, you have to join the community and find your match.
To my point, i’m definitely ME!!! I’m considering myself as the product that will change the world. Am I pretentious?What about you?
@Marina, well you ARE quite something!!^^ This scheme is for entrepreneurs, for other people there are other scheme. For instance in life there are always:- people who use the statut quo- people who try to change things- people who prefer their immediate confort and rather no get involve.In a corporate:- People who teach themselves and share – they make the company grow up (that’s you!)- People who are really good at what they do but no much ambition- People who are on top and are scare that you take their seat.As for me I like to think I am 80% a Mark, 20% a Wozniak 🙂 But by the time pass I become more and more of a Mark…
more of a Mark, me thinks
@rosscranwell Yeap I think you are!
Sounds like @Maria is more of a Lady Gaga. ;-)Personally, I think that if you really look at the people who are not interested in leading teams at all, you’ll find very few of them running huge startups. You can build a lifestyle business that way, or even maybe sell a business or two, but it will be extremely rare that it would end up on TechCrunch. (Notable exceptions: duckduckgo.com and Minecraft)So, IMO, any startup founder who wants to build something huge has to be at least 50% Mark just so that they can get others to buy into their vision and build something bigger than themselves. I’d put myself around 50-55% Mark, and at that level it’s a struggle sometimes (hence why I’m trying to work with a more diverse team this time).
so you are talking for solo-founder startups, right? For me best is to be what you are naturally best at and find a co-founder that compeltes you. Unfortunately it is difficult to find one from the start, then yes, you have to be half half (tough time!)