My claim to Entrepreneurship!

Image by bbcworldservice via Flickr

Today I came across a post on trak.in about "The anatomy of an entrepreneur" , and though I haven't read the original report in full yet, I am hooked to the report and would like to put forward my claims to be an entrepreneur. Firstly somewhat off-topic, I had became deeply interested in Psychology after reading "Anatomy of human destructiveness" and whether I became a good psychologist or not, I have managed to put together a good blog on the same after reading that decisive book that has affected my life to great degree; and though I had become interested in starting my own venture some time back, and this report is in no way a turning point or I would credit as being a seminal influence, it is timely in the sense that I can relate to it and find solace in the fact that I fit the profile of an entrepreneur to a T. And going by my track record, you can be assured that I may fail as an entrepreneur, but I'll hopefully be able to create valuable content for other like-minded folks as I venture on my fools quest , by sharing my experiences and knowledge by means of this Web-Squared blog.

So what are the findings of the report? As summarized by Arun at Trak.in:

Here is your Typical Entrepreneur

* He is from a middle-class or upper lower-class background, and very few come from backgrounds of extreme wealth or extreme poverty.
* He is usually well educated, with only 5 percent or less having a bachelor’s degree.
* He likely to be better educated than their parents were, with half his fathers and a third of their mothers having at least bachelors’ degrees.
* He performed well in high school and in college, with the vast majority ranking average or above in their respective institutions.
* He necessarily does not come from families of entrepreneurs; slightly more than half are the first in their families to launch businesses.
* On average, he tends to be the middle child in a three-child household.
* He is significantly more likely to be married and have children when they launch their first businesses.
* He is far more likely to have worked for an employer for more than six years than to have quickly launched their own businesses.
* His primary motivation for launching a business are to build wealth, to own his own company, and to capitalize on a business idea that he has.

And what is my claim to applying for the entrepreneurial tag?

I am reasonably middle-aged (ya to me 33 is middle-aged), from a middle-class family background, reasonably well-educated (B. Tech from IITD) , better educated then my parents (they both have masters in their subjects; but they are educators; I am an engineer:-) , from a family background where literally no one deep down the line of ancestry had even dreamed of being an entrepreneur; had performed well in high school ,  not so well in college (never had the ganda fighter spirit) , married and having a child; worked for an employer for more than 6 yrs; total industry experience close to 11 yrs; and my motivation to launch my own business is to capitalize on an idea and to be my own boss (making wealth is secondary).

Also, the non-factors are pretty pertinent- the inability to find  employment has never been a factor and never will be- I just wish I was more lucky and had got more encouragement from F&F to start my venture early, but it is never too late! Also, important to note is that even this entrepreneurial group is fragmented in two sub groups and I clearly belong to the late blooming group rather than the group of entrepreneurs that knew they would start their own company soon/eventually, even while in college.

So what domain I am planning to work in? It is the web domain, more specifically social web/ semantic web and perhaps the right time to share another relevant report I discovered today (still not read fully) about the social media landscape in India. Do let me know , by means of comments, whether you would like this to be a purely Tech focused blog, or wont mind an occasional business angle being discussed/ touched upon!