Over-glorifying entrepreneurship

The life of an entrepreneur has often been glorified. How appealing it seems at the thought of freedom, flexibility and possibly earning a fortune.

An investor who runs a seed stage startup accelerator once jokingly asked if he would ever be able to tempt me to becoming an entrepreneur. It was 2012, I had just done interviewing him about the Singaporean startup scene.

His question came as a surprise to me, as my mind was already on a dinner plan with a friend who was then running a travel discovery startup.


Truth be told, it has never crossed my mind to start a business. “I am not hungry enough (to start a business)”, I responded. We have became acquainted since then, his words still etched deep in my mind.

Throughout the years, I find myself repeatedly drawn in by aspiring “startup people” — the positive and driven bunch who are diligently perfecting their skills, products and businesses, while being open at sharing what they have learned along the entrepreneurial journey.

Some people are born with the drive to start out on their own. From the time they get through school, they have the innate desire to start a business and see it through, stop at nothing to make their vision manifests in the physical realm.

I once had a chat with a friend about entrepreneurship. My friend made an immediate association to online businesses, far off the mark from what I had in mind. While entrepreneurship is broad in definition, I often make references to technology startups.

Due to the democratisation of technology and Internet, starting an online business has become much, much more attainable than setting up a mom and pop shop or brick and mortar business.

However, I have seen one too many businesses selling custom T-shirts, food, accessories, and more run-of-the-mill products. While a rare few have made it through the clutter and establish their businesses in the marketplace, many did not.

We often do not get to see the hardships that every successful entrepreneur has been through in the process of steering the business towards a profitable growth.


More are warming to the idea of launching an online business because too many a time, the terminology “entrepreneur” has been glorified. To the extent that first-time entrepreneurs would make a plunge without knowing what they are getting themselves into.

Is the product an improvement of the competitors? How does one sustain a business and weather the inevitable storms? Will one be able to live with the idea of possibly not taking home salaries for several consecutive months?

How good is one at taking up the responsibilities for making wrong decisions and picking oneself up from ashes of failures?

In my network, there are roughly 6% of my friends and acquaintances who are still actively involved in the startup scene one way or the other. A tight-knit community on its own, everyone pretty much knows one another. The very same faces who have stood the test of time, some continuously pivoting or testing one business idea to another in a nascent market.

The toughest part is to keep going despite rough patches long after the initial “gung ho-ness” has faded.

The quest is not for the faint of heart.