I was hoping to create a space here for a more general discussion about these entrepreneurs. Personally, I don’t relate to the Harvard/MIT/Stanford types who are coming out of these privileged incubators and rubbing elbows with all the movers and shakers. I’m sure they deserve to be there, but it is so far from my own situation that I find their stories less than inspiring. Same goes for the independently wealthy. I’m more sympathetic to the multi-generational beekeepers and others who are firmly rooted in a traditional craft, like teaching, and who use that insight and depth of knowledge to create a new, meaningful tool. But I’m particularly interested in a few of these folks have come in from the outside and managed to make a go of it.
The secret for these last two categories of entrepreneur — the Flow Hive couple, the Remind brothers, the BitStrip guy, the Civil Mirror teacher, the Canva woman from Australia — must be that they manage to build the right team, and they manage to stay true to themselves and their own unique vision, and also that they have developed a product that people want. Business sense must be important, too.
(Feel free to post any thoughts, responses, comments, or parade pictures below.)