To be a great entrepreneur you have to build a Mafia around you. Every successful one I know (including my mother) has had to do that. If you can't do that you

To be a great entrepreneur you have to build a Mafia around you. Every successful one I know (including my mother) has had to do that. If you can't do that you fail as an entrepreneur. You build a Mafia, by being so motivated you out-execute everyone who bets against you and earn the respect of the smart people around you. The trick here is to surround yourself with smart people you can learn from in the first place. A good startup Mafia picks its people veeery carefully and pulls in those it wants. (a people hire a people, b people hire c people). It forms through action, not job postings - you have to burn through the same fire everyone else in your group is made of. Which is why a great startup Mafia sticks together, and keeps leveraging the network to amplify its people in their second, third and fourth attempts, while drawing a clout of deal flow towards itself. Execution gets better and better, and deal-flow means they also see the best opportunities coming their way to the point where the usual odds don't apply anymore.