I was keynote speaker at “Invention to Venture,” a technology entrepreneurship event sponsored by the University of Portland. I enjoyed the group thoroughly, and it forced me to articulate some of what I gather are less obvious viewpoints on starting a business.

Somebody asked me to comment on what makes an entrepreneur, and with the question, presented the common picture of the entrepreneur driven by the vision. This reminded me that my case was different. I left a good job at Creative Strategies and started on my own not because of something I wanted to build, not because of creative vision, but rather because I thought I could make enough money to keep my family whole and do what I wanted.  I wanted interesting work, and I wanted to choose my work.  I wanted to actually do the writing and research, not supervise others. It was important to me that what I spend hours doing was something fun — I always found writing and planning and working numbers fun — even though I didn’t have the idea that would create the empire.  I was avoiding boredom, not building castles.

(Question: this was my first post on this blog, posted originally in 2006. I changed a couple of words and posted it again today because somebody asked me about it. I’m thinking about doing that with some others of my oldest posts. In the beginning nobody read this blog, and I like some of what I posted back then. Like this one. Is that a good idea? What do you think about it?)