{"id":60,"date":"2019-10-03T17:08:59","date_gmt":"2019-10-03T16:08:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kleosafrica.com\/blog\/?p=60"},"modified":"2023-11-10T05:04:38","modified_gmt":"2023-11-10T04:04:38","slug":"the-technology-entrepreneur","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kleosafrica.com\/blog\/2019\/10\/03\/the-technology-entrepreneur\/","title":{"rendered":"The Technology Entrepreneur"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Uber.\nFacebook. WhatsApp. Instagram. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Tales\nof billion-dollar acquisitions, and life-changing business deals on a world\nscale have succeeded in drawing the young and the young-at-heart to what is\narguably the world\u2019s most attractive business profession \u2013 technology\nentrepreneurship. Similar to the hordes of people who swarmed across 20<sup>th<\/sup>-century\nCalifornia in search of gold during the gold rush era, a new movement has begun\nin 21<sup>st<\/sup> century Silicon Valley, and has spread across most of the\ndeveloped and developing world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Once\none gets the entrepreneurial itch, one has to scratch it. Many young people get\nbitten by the entrepreneurial bug while studying for bachelor\u2019s, masters or even\ndoctoral degrees and leave the prospects of a juicy corporate career to join\nthe ranks of optimistic techpreneurs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At\nits core, a \u2018\u2019venture-backed\u2019\u2019 technology startup is a high-growth enterprise\nthat is invested with large resources and which, in turn, is expected to\ndeliver large returns to founders and investors. More than 70% of them fail to\nachieve these lofty goals, but the few unicorns that exceed the venture\ncapitalist\u2019s expectations, manage to compensate for the rest of the losses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The\nbusiness implications of this type of venture are as follows:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>They start out little but are expected to grow\nquickly<\/li><li>They are financed by several rounds of angel\nand\/or venture capital investment<\/li><li>If successful, investors usually exit the\ncompany through an initial public offering on a notable Stock Exchange or\nthrough an acquisition by a larger behemoth. If unsuccessful, the company is\nsubjected to a sad, melancholy shutdown.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>The\nlifestyle implications of this type of venture are as follows:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>The entrepreneur should expect to put his\npersonal life on hold for the period of time it takes for the company to scale.\nAs Paul Graham mentioned during one of Y-Combinator\u2019s Startup School classes, the\nexperience of managing a scalable startup can be likened to \u2018\u2019catching a dragon\nby its tail.\u2019\u2019<\/li><li>The immense investment by the venture capitalist\nsubjects the entrepreneur to immense pressure to grow. One needs to be ready to\n\u2018\u2019give one\u2019s all\u2019\u2019 for business growth.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Most\nfounders of technology based businesses have a background in computer science\nand\/or engineering \u2013 they are the stereotypical geeks. However, they often lack\nthe managerial skills to take the company to the next stage and so they are\nusually replaced by a more experienced CEO, further down the road. However,\nthey agree to this loss of control as \u2018\u2019Owning 17% of Facebook is better than\nowning 100% of nothing.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At its core, a \u2018\u2019venture-backed\u2019\u2019 technology startup is a high-growth enterprise that is invested with large resources and which, in turn, is expected to deliver large returns to founders and investors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":61,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,10],"tags":[13,15],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kleosafrica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kleosafrica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kleosafrica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kleosafrica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kleosafrica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kleosafrica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62,"href":"https:\/\/kleosafrica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60\/revisions\/62"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kleosafrica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kleosafrica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kleosafrica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kleosafrica.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}