Seeing the elephant
Entrepreneurship is multi-domain freedom.
In the old Indian fable, a group of blind men come upon an elephant for the first time, each of them grasping only one part of the animal. “This is like a snake” — says the one with the trunk. “A pillar” — says the man holding its leg. “Dangerous, like a spear” — says the one who has felt the tusk.
A new start-up venture is a lot like an elephant.
“It’s pre-revenue, needs more traction.” — says the VC. “It’s an interesting hypothesis, needs more research.” — says the academic. “It’s not fully compliant with standards.” —says the bureaucrat. “It’s software hosted in the cloud.” — says the IT department. “It’s a mobile app, put it on the app store.” —says the ex-Apple employee.
Most people work inside professional bubbles — consultants drink with consultants, academics stay on campus, bureaucrats hang out in government circles. VCs might meet academics at dinner parties (but they rarely meet dancers, who aren’t rich enough to be invited). They might talk about the football or private schools, they might even share office stories. But they never actually cross the boundaries and work in another bubble.
The best part of being an entrepreneur is being professionally free — able to move between bubbles. A typical day might involve —talking finance with an investor at breakfast, learning about patent law in the morning, discussing AI algorithms with academic collaborators after lunch, sketching designs, smashing some Javascript code back in the office and then getting feedback from international students in the afternoon.
There is no job inside any organization with that level of exposure to diverse people and minds. More than that, no organization tolerates such a massively multi-disciplinary working style. If I were a professor, I’d have to get back to writing papers and teaching. If I were a software contractor, I’d be paid to code. If I were a corporate manager, I’d be told to stop hanging out with randoms and start concentrating on my KPIs.
The key advantage of the entrepreneur is freedom, and the signature outcome of that is to create ventures that no one within an organization can create. We can traverse different domains of knowledge (drawing on the experts within bubbles) and create new and useful things that are a synthesis. We are free to learn and interact as much as we like within each bubble without the anxiety of having to fight for status and play political games — because we have the freedom to leave any bubble at any time.
Not that it’s easy. It can be frustrating and lonely to be the only person in the room who sees the elephant — and if someone is only holding the tail, there is no use trying to talk to them about the whole animal. But we can try to coax people to explore outside of their bubble, and to do that we have to develop an empathy for them, learn their language and understand their motivations.
But some people just refuse to engage outside of their bubble, because they are afraid of losing their professional authority and status. Many bubbles are also cliques. Sometimes we face hostility when we enter a bubble as an outsider — we can be seen as a threat to the status quo.
But despite all the challenges, it’s totally worth it. An entrepreneur has freedom, which is pretty much what everyone else wants anyway (if you really think about it). Work and life feel much more real. The elephant is still an elephant whether you perceive it to be or not. Being an entrepreneur puts you in touch with reality like nothing else.
Besides, it’s fun! Working on something you love, meeting smart and interesting people from every walk of life, exploring and learning something new every day — what more could one want from life! :)
