

Entrepreneurs Are Artists - cwan
http://steveblank.com/2011/04/09/entrepreneurs-are-artists/

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wheels
This is one of those things that continually rubs me the wrong way.  There
seems to be a perversion of the term "artist" to mean "someone who create
stuff" or "someone who creates stuff that I find inspiring".  But artists are
people who create _art_. 

Founders are (at least in some cases) _craftsmen_.  That's the word that
they're looking for.  There are all sorts of craftsmen who are not "artists". 
It sounds cooler to style ourselves artists, but that doesn't make it true. 

There's a spectrum between functional craft and pure art, but it's not
entirely clear to me that startups are even on that spectrum and if they are,
it's hard panned towards the functional side. 

~~~
jaxn
Isn't that just semantics?  Is a master woodworker not an artist?  I have seen
some really beautiful furniture in are galleries (functional furniture too). 

Don't the best craftsmen consider themselves artists? 

~~~
jamesbritt
_Isn't that just semantics?  Is a master woodworker not an artist?_ 

Do you mean a highly skilled crafts-person, i.e. an artisan?  Or do you mean
someone who creates experiences that challenge one's understanding and
perception of themselves and their world? 

 _I have seen some really beautiful furniture in are galleries (functional
furniture too)._ 

So have I, but I've yet to see any furniture that created an experience for me
similar to to that of seeing certain works by van Gogh or Delacroix or
Duchamp, or hearing works by Tchaikovsky or Reich. 

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lionhearted
I'm a massive fan of Steve Blank and I like this video, but I think it's
incomplete - the artist skillset is incredibly valuable, but it's not the only
way to get there from here.  And people without the artist makeup ought not be
discouraged from jumping into the fray to build and create. 

Take John Rockefeller.  I was just reading a wonderful short summary about his
life, and the author mentioned that Rockefeller had two unique skillsets that
are extremely rare to find in one person - the selling/enterprising/visionary
skillset, as well as the manager/kaizen/numbers skillset. 

He was enterprising - he took on lots of speculative engineering and chemistry
projects, bid speculatively on things and started projects betting they'd
invent technology necessary to realize gains later - even though the
technology didn't exist when they started the project, and might not when they
needed it. 

This is the "artist" skillset - there's some intuition, some vision as Steve
Blank calls it... it's subjective, there's a lot of feel and the most rigorous
analysts have still never been able to codify it.  Just when people are
starting to get a handle on what works, the economy has transformed and new
industries are on the rise with slightly different patterns of business in
them. 

In that regard, yes, many entrepreneurs are artists.  And any newly-founded
company will likely need an enterprising/artist/visionary type if they intend
to grow quite large. 

But the second skillset - numbers/manager/kaizen - more "scientist" than
artist - is also incredibly valuable and makes a great entrepreneur.  The
person that can make the nuts and bolts work, that can save a penny here and
there by using 39 drops of steel to seal a barrel instead of 40... that's also
good and crucial.  Someone with an amazing grasp of numbers, finance,
accounting, statistics, probability, expenses, lifetime value of a customer,
cashflows... someone that lives and loves numbers... that person can be a
major, major asset to a growing business. 

It's _extraordinarily_ rare to find both in one person.  If you don't want to
develop the visionary/enterprising/artist skillset and want to build something
world-changing, you'd do well to search and try to connect with people with
that skillset. 

But that doesn't mean that you _must_ be of that skillset to succeed as an
entrepreneur.  Scientist/numbers/precision/kaizen entrepreneurs also build
massive amounts of wealth, though you hear about them less often because it's
naturally less flashy. 

~~~
jaxn
Do you have a link to the stuff on Rockefeller?  Sounds like an interesting
read. 

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wcsun
He emphasized on the vision.  Great craftsmanship follows. 

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durbin
I haven't read the article and I'm not a Steve Blank fan but I upvoted because
I love and agree with the headline.