I sat there munching on my cheeseburger at McDonald's, glancing at my watch for the millionth time in the last twenty minutes, waiting for my bus. Another check at the timetable revealed that my wait would last for 25 more minutes. Seemed like eternity. It was at this precise moment that a thought hit me – What was it about this country that, despite
Life being dictated by bus schedules (at least for the people without a car)
The paucity of options available for a half-decent vegan meal
Incoming calls being charged as heavily as outgoing calls
Life being dictated by bus schedules(Did I mention that already?),
that it still continues to be the Holy Mecca for innovators and dreamers alike?
Several factors can be attributed to this, many of them embedded into the culture, including the capitalist policies espoused by America and the ease for starting a new business but I felt these factors weigh more heavily in incubating entrepreneurs
- The broad American tradition of philanthropy, even to relative strangers, ensures that even first time entrepreneurs can obtain help from affluent individuals(i.e. Angel Investors),
- American schooling, despite its well-advertised vices, does afford the students the time and energy for activities other than formal education
- The respect given by the society to all kinds of jobs
- America's acceptance of Failure: This is probably the most important reason why the entrepreneurship culture continues to flourish and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. The stigma that accompanies failure in some societies, one that can damage reputations and adversely affect careers, is relatively suppressed, and this helps breed more entrepreneurs. Statistics show that the average American entrepreneur succeeds at the Third time of asking, thus substantiating this argument.
PS: Select portions of this article have been written with an EXTREMELY high Indian grad student bias, and hence extrapolating it to the entire community may cause an extreme case of nausea. Or Gonorrhea. Or BOTH.
3 comments:
so you know the solution to all your problems, right?
1) Buy a car
2) Eat meat
3) Drive your car instead of riding the bus.
Hope these pointers help in making you feel better about the "land of opportunity"
:)
Ah, the first comment :)
I guess 1) and 3) are feasible, still have to find an alternate for 2) :)
That being said, the entrepreneurial spirit would require me to find solutions to these problems rather than find alternatives :)
Ashwin,
Talking about having a car to beat the waits for buses here, I came across a company called Goose Networks which offers carpooling services. Check out the website at http://www.readysetgoose.com/
And guess what, it's located in Seattle as well ;)
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