“I’m not sure I knew what an entrepreneur was when I was
ten, but I knew that starting little businesses and trying to sell greeting
cards or newspapers door-to-door or just vending machine kind of thing is… there’s just something very intriguing to me
about that.”
-Steve Case, co-founder and former CEO of AOL
According to a 2006 study [1], approximately 2/3 of entrepreneurs claim it was their “innate drive” that inspired them to start their own business. In other words, they were born an entrepreneur.
Of the remaining entrepreneurs surveyed, 21% credited work experience as their motivation for taking the leap, and 16% said they were inspired by the success of others around them.
Forty-two percent of these entrepreneurs also said they started a childhood business venture, meaning that kid selling lemonade down the street might just be a future business owner.
Is a person born an entrepreneur, or is the entrepreneurial attitude created out of experience? Can it be either? Or maybe some combination of both?
Were you born an entrepreneur?