Defining Entrepreneurship

Our mission at Render Capital is to create an environment where entrepreneurs build businesses and thrive. But what is an entrepreneur? What do they do? The term is so widely used that it can mean many different things depending on who you ask. To gain some insight into the nature of entrepreneurship, we asked a few of our portfolio companies, partners, and friends what entrepreneurship means to them. Here is what they had to say.

Alex Plonsker, CEO & Founder, Split Gym

“Starting a business is an experience that will change the way you go through life. You will learn and grow more than you ever could have imagined. However you plan everything out, there will be a part of your business plan that doesn’t make sense. When everyone else says ‘no,’ ‘can’t,’ ‘won’t,’ you say ‘yes,’ ‘can,’ ‘will.’ That’s being the entrepreneur, believing that you will make it work. That fundamental characteristic of belief is what really makes an entrepreneur.”

Charley Miller, Founder & CEO, Unitonomy

“The nature of entrepreneurship is essentially problem-solving. The problems range from the obvious big ones, what are we inventing or selling?, to the dozens of daily, unexpected small ones, like how do we improve our email deliverability? Some people compare building a startup to climbing a mountain. I’ve come to imagine it more like being lost in a jungle, where you use your sense of direction while gaining clues as to the path ahead. You have to like the inherent frustration of problem-solving to enjoy being an entrepreneur.”

Kyle Poulin, CEO & Founder, True Adherence

“I define the nature of entrepreneurship as the art of seeing what may exist in the world and pursuing the actions necessary to make that existence a part of reality.”

Melanie Fischer, Owner & Founder, Froggy’s Popcorn

“To me, entrepreneurship is about creating something that’s bigger than you. It’s persistence. It’s celebrating the little wins, accepting that you can’t do it alone, and knowing when to use the wiser advice. It’s a chaotic, plate-spinning circus of beauty.”

Alexander “Sasha” Chack, Owner & Founder, Cold Smoke Bagels

“Entrepreneurship for me can be just as exciting and empowering as it can be disappointing and exhausting. The highest highs and lowest lows. It requires a trust and confidence in oneself, and provides the greatest professional opportunity to create, to manifest one’s deepest inner passions in the world. It’s a science and an art.”

Cassandra Gray, CEO, Creative Spirits Behavioral Health

“Entrepreneurship requires radical compassion, relentless optimism, and a bold vision to serve a compelling need. No matter the service you provide, the product you sell, or the pain point you solve, the journey of an entrepreneur is a journey of compassion, optimism, and a clear model that provides value.”

Corey Wood, Co-founder, Elixir Kombucha

“The relationship between responsibility and meaning is fundamental to the entrepreneurial pursuit. We assume the responsibility of taking an idea, developing a product we believe will solve a problem and deliver value, and building a company around it. We step out into the unknown and hope to discover something worthwhile. This takes time, effort, vision, and capital, not to mention the emotional costs of stress, uncertainty, and struggle. There’s a lot of responsibility in this pursuit, and a deep sense of meaning that comes along with it too.”

David Taliaferro, CEO, Lenderfit

“The nature of entrepreneurship is personal growth by way of value creation for the whole. Few activities have such a profound and simultaneous effect on both the individual and society. Entrepreneurship without community is impossible, and a community that lacks entrepreneurship has unfulfilled potential.”

Jackson Andrews, Managing Director, Endeavor Louisville

“Entrepreneurship encompasses the vision, execution, and persistence to build something of great value while experiencing both dynamic struggles and triumphs. Entrepreneurs are the market’s change-makers who bring opportunity and inspiration together.”

Nikki R. Lanier, Senior Vice President & Regional Executive, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

“Entrepreneurship is a state of being. It’s not something that you do, it’s something that you are. It’s an undertaking that is merciless in its taking and unyielding in its giving. It requires dexterity, courage, tenacity, and gumption. It requires potent clarity and comfortable confusion. It brings out the best of us and contributes to our entire economic ecosystem.”

Patrick Henshaw, Investor & Board Member

“The nature of entrepreneurship is defined by a calculated risk-taker who understands the drive behind the necessity of finding a solution to a problem. This measured risk includes the variables of resources, an empathetic discernment of customer needs, a distinct value proposition, the depth of the competition, and most importantly a specific point of difference. The nature of an entrepreneur is that of an innovator, a maker, a disruptor, a problem solver, a passionate and determined individual who perseveres, loves the hustle and the hard work, and is dedicated to do whatever it takes to transform an idea into a reality.”

Madison Hamman, Managing Director, BlueSky Capital

“The nature of entrepreneurship is to see needs and fill needs. A successful entrepreneur does this with an uncanny balance of delusion, talent, work, and perseverance.”

Greg Langdon, Investor & Startup Advisor

“Entrepreneurship is essentially about creation and growth. A successful entrepreneur sees a need, creates a solution to meet it, and finds a way to sell it to customers. The resulting growth creates a range of benefits: customers’ circumstances are improved, jobs are created, positive returns are provided for investors, and economic growth occurs. History shows it’s particularly effective at creating growth when coupled with new technologies.”

Jonny Price, Director of Fundraising, Wefunder

“Entrepreneurship is creating something out of nothing. It’s taking risks, and taking action, now. It’s supreme self-confidence that you’re right when everyone is telling you you’re wrong. But at the same time, the humility to ask questions, learn lessons, and pivot when you need to. It’s grit. It’s leadership. It’s people.”

Asia Rivers, Owner and Executive Director, Talk Childcare to Me

“Entrepreneurship is the risk-taking and bootstrapping of every aspect of the business. But as an entrepreneur, you get to witness your passion turn into real life. Entrepreneurs get to combine existing knowledge, skills, drive, initiative, and the spirit of innovation, and put it to the test.”

Gill Holland, The Group Entertainment

“Entrepreneurship is taking an idea from the blind optimism stage, fertilizing it with gallons of sweat equity, leveraging it with capital, social and financial, growing it with pragmatism and sometimes hard knocks, and, if it is not an abysmal failure, harvesting it with success defined the way you want to define it: personally, civically, financially, or by impact.”

Bryce Butler, Managing Partner, Access Ventures

“Entrepreneurs are change-makers. Ultimately, they are responsible for long-term community and economic growth through the realization of new ideas and processes that create value and solve problems within markets.”

LaToya Cook Bradley, Owner, Brew & Sip Coffee Bar

“The nature of entrepreneurship, to me, is the process of planning, operating, and accepting all risk of my business, win or lose. It’s so rewarding to see the smiles on faces when the vision becomes reality. My personal journey has been a number of no’s, but actually seeing my coffee shop open in the middle of a pandemic brings me nothing but joy and all smiles.”

Ben Reno-Weber, Executive Director, Microsoft Future of Work Initiative

“Entrepreneurship means taking ownership of solving a problem that impacts multiple people. It can be a business problem, a personal problem, a social problem, but an entrepreneur is someone who creates something new to solve that problem and then casts it into the universe to succeed or fail.”