Types of Entrepreneurs and Startups
Tacolicious is a small business startup with a tangible, human ROI for founder Della Reese Brown (right) and her employees.
Many stories in the media focus on high-tech scalable businesses, when they talk about Entrepreneurship. I’m guilty too. I guess there’s really no harm in this. It’s great to study, discuss and celebrate high-tech scalable startups: idea generation, innovation, team development, launch, funding process, business modeling, growth and development, successes and failures… and the entrepreneurs behind all of it.
As we all know, these highly scalable, high-tech businesses have the power to change the world.
I’m going to Internet Week in NY next week and will be steeped in this world. There will be plenty of parties, conferences, panels and other activities. I’m hosting an event focused on digital media entrepreneurship, presenting Newhouse School student startups to VCs, angels and others who can help them grow and succeed. My Newhouse event — and the entire week of events — should be fun, exciting, enlightening, and fast-moving… And surely, some amazing stories of funding deals, parties, launches and business success will emerge. I really love this stuff!
But, this past week, I went to a different kind of entrepreneurial celebration: a “launch party” for a small, lifestyle start-up that I see it represents a different, more personal and meaningful way to change the world: one person at a time.
The event was held at a newly opened local restaurant, Tacolious, started by an entrepreneur who wanted to have her own restaurant and be her own boss. The founder, Della Reese Brown, also has Lupus — a disease that added obstacles to all the typical risks of starting a business. The celebration at her restaurant was more than just a celebration of business success, it was a celebration of individual triumph and a life forever changed. Very powerful.
It turns out that self-employment and small, lifestyle businesses (like Della’s Tacolious) are a logical, viable option for many people with disabilities, since unemployment is very high among disabled Americans: at least twice as high as the national average, according to the official Bureau of Labor Statistics — and even higher than that, according to many in the disability community (60%!) who say many people with disabilities are not even counted — or counted incorrectly — in the official statistics.
Regardless of the actual unemployment numbers, this situation led to the founding of Start-Up New York, a program designed to help people with disabilities start small business ventures. The program is a collaboration of government, non-profits, a business incubator, and university, including the Burton Blatt Institute and Syracuse University’s Whitman School of Management. And success here has more personal meaning than the usual ROI statistics.
Later in the week, I had a meeting with Mike Haynie, who heads another Entrepreneurship program that gets amazing personal and meaningful returns on investment in startups. The Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans with Disabilities (EBV) addresses a similar issue around high unemployment rates for returning veterans, especially ones with disabilities.
Founded by the Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University in 2007, EBV offers training in entrepreneurship and small business management at seven universities across the country, helping vets develop skills in launching and growing a small business, while leveraging other programs and services for veterans and people with disabilities as well. Here’s a listing of just some of the EBV companies, but if you want to see the real ROI, take a look at the videos. (I highly recommend the video with Justin Constandine. I had the pleasure to meet and work with Justin a couple of years ago with his business IraqandBack.com. Great guy! What a personal story!)
In past posts on this blog, I have talked about the different types and traits of entrepreneurs. Clearly, there are also different types of startups and entrepreneurship. Steve Blank did a nice job articulating four types of startups in his scathing post about Startup America.
1. Small Business Entrepreneurship
2. Scalable Startup Entrepreneurship
3. Large Company Entrepreneurship
4. Social Entrepreneurship
Blank argues (rightly I think), that these are very different types of startups, requiring very different support, resources and incentives. Interestingly, Brad Feld, a member of Startup America, told a group when he spoke right after the launch of the program that the Obama Administration recognizes that there’s a big difference between small business and high-growth scalable startups. Both Feld and Blank contend that an overwhelming amount of the job growth will come from high-growth tech startups. Kauffman Foundation studies agree. I agree.
In the full scheme of our national economic policy, I see that small business startups can have a multiplier effect, creating additional job growth when the economy is growing. But based on my experience this week, I see another great place in the mix. Some small business startups (of self-employment AND lifestyle businesses, which can sometimes grow to be rather large, albeit more slowly than high-tech startups) represent another part of American Entrepreneurship picture.
Without all the hoopla of the high-tech startup world, each small business startup is a celebration of American independence, self-reliance, personal growth, tenacity and overcoming obstacles. We need ALL of this, and we need EVERYONE.
This entry was posted on Sunday, June 5th, 2011 at 4:41 pm and is filed under Entrepreneurship, Innovation Policy, Inspiration - Innovation, Personal Statements. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
6 Responses to “Types of Entrepreneurs and Startups”
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Types of Entrepreneurs and Startups « Sean Branagan says:June 5, 2011 at 10:28 pm
[...] Post picked up by Small Business Bulletin: Types of Entrepreneurs and Startups « Sean Branagan [...]
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Sean Branagan says: June 6, 2011 at 8:17 am
Just saw a piece on MSNBC’s Morning Joe this morning (6/6) interviewing Warren Buffet, the mayor of New Orleans and one of the new entrepreneurs who has grown his business because of a Goldman Sachs program to support small business entrepreneurship. I think the underlying point that Buffet made during the interview is that we need ALL BUSINESSES to grow to help this economy. Reading just a bit between the lines, I think Buffett is most aware that our country NEEDS to get to work and build our own successes, rather than wait for someone else. Plus, our economy DEPENDS on a positive feeling of growth and hope for the future, and small business entrepreneurship provides this as well.
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Types of Entrepreneurs and Startups says:June 7, 2011 at 11:15 pm
[...] educator and speaker on marketing, online and digital media and technology startups. Original post. Follow [...]
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Hyperlocal offers the full spectrum of entrepreneurial opportunity « Sean Branagan says:October 31, 2011 at 6:20 am
[...] and still others are tech entrepreneurs. The Street Fight Summit brought together all these types of entrepreneurs in the hyperlocal industry, all seeing [...]
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Hyperlocal offers the full spectrum of entrepreneurial opportunity says:November 10, 2011 at 7:30 pm
[...] and still others are tech entrepreneurs. The Street Fight Summit brought together all these types of entrepreneurs in the hyperlocal industry, all seeing [...]
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Why entrepreneurship matters right now …and how the west was won. « Sean Branagan says:January 15, 2012 at 3:56 pm
[...] makes someone an entrepreneur. (See Saras Sarasvathy’s video on this. Great!) There are different types of entrepreneurs and different types of startups. We need them [...]
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