Short excerpt from a podcast conversation (Simon Sinek and another speaker) discussing whether traditional forms of entrepreneurship — e.g., bank loans, small-business loans, bootstrapping, friends-and-family financing — are declining, and framing entrepreneurship as a form of rebellion that can resurge. The exchange questions whether advice about scalability and venture funding discourages some entrepreneurs.
Chapters
I wonder if your form of entrepreneurship, which is, you know, getting a bank loan and like there are systems that exist to raise money. I wonder if, if that is a dying breed, are we neglecting or are we. And are there an entire class of entrepreneurs that probably won't bother because somebody's talked them out of it because quote unquote, it's not scalable or they can't get venture and so they think it's not viable and or they don't know that is such thing as a small business loan or credit card debt or friends and family or bootstrapping, you know, all of these old fashioned ways of, of getting cash infusions to build a business. I'm wondering if that form of entrepreneurship is just going away.
I think it is, but I think it always is ready for a resurgence because it'll be a rebellion. And that is actually what entrepreneurship is, is a rebellion. Right? That is literally what it is.
Say more.
If you take money from someone, you work for them, right? You're not an entrepreneur. In my mind, like entrepreneur is taking risks. They are rebelling against the system. They are saying they're planting a flag and say, I'm going to take a stand for something that doesn't exist. I'm always out talking about start small and build entrepreneurship. That's what I call it. It's like one big bunch of words. But I still believe that in America anybody can start where they're at and build anything they can imagine. And if, and that's the work, I mean that's what we should be as a country. I still believe it is possible. It is really hard and it's not what we're showing. So if somebody wants to start a business, they see, oh, we have to know somebody, raise money, have some kind of stat. But then people do it all the time without those things. And it seems like it's this miracle or something. It's just about one foot in front of the other. Literally one dollar and then another dollar and another dollar.
