Is it me, or does it feel like many entrepreneurial discussions today aren’t about new ideas, but are about the “meta” stuff (processes, methods, groups, etc.) around entrepreneurship? Everyone seems to be talking about seed stage funds, how to get funding, how to start companies, the latest Y-combinator clone, organizing meetups, incubators/hatcheries, etc.
To use an analogy I saw fly by somewhere (and can’t fully credit, sorry): it seems like the action has moved from making money on foreclosures, to infomercials and books about making money on foreclosures.
Are ideas so plentiful they’re not the focus anymore?
Am I hanging out with the wrong crowd?
It strikes me that a lot of these conversations are about entrepreneurs finding ways to “diversify” in the style of more traditional investors.
I will make money by providing a web 2.0 directory and forum for writers of books about entrepreneurs. Funding please!
I think that ideas, execution, infrastructure and finance/process are the four things that matter.
The LAMP stack has made infrastructure trivial.
Ideas do seem to be pretty thick on the ground.
It’s not clear that execution can be taught (although Steve Blank’s awesome stuff is arguably pure “execution”).
What’s left is finance/process.
All of which is to say: no, I get the same impression that you do.
Yes, you are so right.
I call this the Paris Hilton-ization of entrepreneurship
Fledgling entrepreneurs (as well as VCs, and also oddly, encouraged by VCs) spend way way way more of their time poring over techcrunch and other blogs and reading and writing posts and tweets and attending events (large and small) and generally furiously mulling over the idea of entrepreneurship, rather than focusing on some idea (cold fusion, hot tamales) that makes them want to get the hell to work
it goes over like a turd in the punchbowl, but i am constantly advising young entreprneeurs and companies to literally remove tjemselves from the ecosystem for a while. stop reading the blogs and tweets, stop going to events, stop hanging out at techie watering holes, stop poring over the competitive landscape and VCs portfolios and press releases etc etc etc — and just care about one thing: why do I want to be an entrepreneur, which is a lonely, scary, very difficult road, with a high likelihood of failure.
and also, disconnect completely from the VC ecosystem. raising VC money does not mean a company is successful. plan and work for the company to be successful and VC funding may hopefully follow. but not the other way around!
end of rant (for now!)
I totally concur. All these things are a means to distract yourself from the high anxiety that accompanies starting a new venture. But the time spent on them is time not spent on making your business successful. And as the saying goes, time is money.