Redefining “Entrepreneur”
By: Janani Rajan
Tags: Technology, Stereotypes, Startup, Entrepreneurship, Business

Okay. Let’s get things straight. I’m no entrepreneur. I don’t run a large corporation or a small business. I haven’t really been out in the world. In fact, I’m just a mere high school student. But I have an idea. And right now, that’s all that matters.

I am currently participating in an online high school internship from iStart Valley, an award-winning business accelerator for technology based startups. During the course of the internship, I developed a startup idea, validated it, talked to potential customers for feedback, and even built a rough prototype for it. For months together, my startup idea, BugByte, was sitting in my head, and now, I can’t get it out. This internship inspired me to turn this idea into a reality. To deploy my product out to the public. To change the world with just a single idea I came up with out of the blue.

This internship inspired me to become an entrepreneur.

But I can’t become an entrepreneur, can I? Like I said before, I haven’t experienced the real world. I don’t know what’s out there. I’m just your average, procrastinating, moping, moaning high school student.

Wrong.

If there’s anything I learned throughout the internship, it is that anyone can become an entrepreneur.

But first, what is an entrepreneur?

Here’s the textbook definition:

a person who organizes and operates a business or businesses, taking on greater than normal financial risks in order to do so.

Read this definition five times. What do you imagine? Let me guess, a man in a suit who knows the ins and outs of business, along with a laptop, a briefcase containing the classic “Entrepreneur’s Essential Toolkit,” and a big smile.

Well, I’m here to tell you that this is wrong. Still not convinced? Here are a few entrepreneurs that aren’t the spitting image of the stereotypical entrepreneur:

Mark Zuckerberg, creator of the world’s largest social network, Facebook, doesn’t have a degree. In fact, he dropped out of college in 2004 during his sophomore year to work on Facebook full-time. Now, look where he is! Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, dropped out of Harvard to focus on building his company. Bill Gates has been the world’s richest man for 13 consecutive years, which just shows that a degree is not necessary to become an entrepreneur! Ah, Cory’s cookies. One of the most heartwarming entrepreneurship stories of all time. Cory, a young child who wanted to help his mom (a single mother) get a job and a car, started his business at age 6, selling hot chocolate in a street corner. This business slowly evolved into Mr. Cory’s cookies, a company that ships their gourmet cookies and other food items nationwide. Cory, a six year old, definitely does not fit the image of the stereotypical entrepreneur. However, look how far he and his mother have come! Bella Tipping, at age 13, was the founder of Kidzcationz.com, a website where kids could write their own reviews about hotels, attractions, and all sorts of places, about which places best suited their needs. Again, she doesn’t look like the man with the laptop and a briefcase. Still, her business succeeded tremendously! In northern Kenya, a place where culture denies women an education, the right to own property, or even make decisions about their own bodies, a 30-year-old woman defied these stereotypes by creating her own company, BeadWORKS. In 2016, BeadWORKS earned over $75,000, a grand sum in these remote communities.

These are five people with completely different backgrounds. Five people with completely different goals. And yet, all five created their own businesses successfully, without looking like the spitting image of the stereotypical entrepreneur.

Now, let’s redefine the word entrepreneur:

a person who has a life-changing idea and works inventively to turn this idea into a reality.

We all need to understand that anyone with the right mindset and dedication can become an entrepreneur, regardless of race, gender, age, or even education. All it takes is an idea, and the will to make it a reality. That is what defines an entrepreneur.