The Silicon Valley Entrepreneur

The Characteristics of the Silicon Valley entrepreneur:

1. Passion- the deep desire to change the world—and the full experience that this will be achieved.
2. Authenticity.
3. Idea-driven- ideas are the commodity, produced and consumed in the way traditional goods are produced and consumed elsewhere.
4. Risk-taking- they take risks to create disruptive innovations or take on the competition, actions that are central to receiving the ecosystem’s respect and encouragement.
5. Trustworthiness- they operate in an open and collaborative environment, rarely shying away from sharing what they’re truly working on. This type of sharing drives the entrepreneurs to keep evolving, since the smallest bit of relevant information can allow one to keep pace with changing technologies or protect one from a fatal flaw in a business strategy or product.
6. Resilience.

Four shades of entrepreneurship:

1. Serial entrepreneur- love to start companies, and can’t imagine staying at any one company for too long. They find a formula that works and apply it over and over, often running several ventures concurrently.
2. Transformational entrepreneur- tend to drive the Silicon Valley culture. They are perceived as focused, committed, and revolutionary in their thinking. They see themselves as agents of evolutionary change; they have a proposed solution to any question about the world’s problems.
3. Acquisition entrepreneur- they acquire and develop technology.
4. Visionary entrepreneur.

Source: Secrets of Silicon Valley. What Everyone Else Can Learn from the Innovation Capital of the World (2013) by Deborah Perry Piscione.