I have met hundreds of entrepreneurs at Bootstrappers Breakfasts over the last years and this description and taxonomy bears no relationship to my experience.
There is a massive audience for "grindset" content that has imo has very little curiosity to it outside of ways of acquiring wealth, I think that may be some level of evidence for his argument.
Even more anecdotally, when I scroll LinkedIn I constantly see extremely successful people making posts that massively simplify complex and interesting topics into painfully one-dimensional problems with easy answers. Some of that is definitely politically driven but either way its those people that I thought of while reading the piece.
We don't attract a lot of the "make money while you sleep" or "four hour work week" folks--but I don't consider them entrepreneurs. I think there are two critical elements of an an entrepreneurial disposition:
1. Commit to the exchange of value for value, of quid pro quo. This does not preclude acts of generosity and kindness.
2. Cultivate the capability to take prudent risks to explore and learn. It embeds the realization that failure is a real possibility and a plan that anticipates how to survive a sequence of small failures (of “affordable losses”) is far preferable to incurring a substantial loss that bankrupts you.
But it's also likely there is considerable selection bias in Rao's sample and he should be cautious to generalize to all entrepreneurs. I recently re-read
McDonald's: Behind The Arches by John F. Love https://www.amazon.com/McDonalds-Behind-John-F-Love/dp/05533...
Sam Walton: Made in America by Sam Walton with John Huey https://www.amazon.com/Sam-Walton-Made-America/dp/0385426151...
I was struck by how curious Walton and Kroc were about the competition and about how much they listened and incorporated feedback from store managers and suppliers into their business. The ideas that propelled expansion all came from others as both firms scaled up. And they discovered those ideas because they were curious, they solicited them, and they listened.
Some founders are irregular people and some irregular people are founders.
Being a founder is not somehow a class above, any more than being a politician, a soldier, a cop, or whatever else. We may afford such people greater status, but they are just regular people with a particular career.
Founders that don't see noteworthy success are more likely to be 'regular' people, but even then that's likely a minority. As the majority probably have way above average risk tolerance.
Like "entrepreneurs" (whatever the author makes as a definition) are fundamentally not "regular people" (whatever the author etc.). What kings can learn from peons ? Everything, kings know nothing and rely on other people to do everything. They only have the means (the money) to motivate them.
Shit we all lost 5mn.
