4 ms·

“Can you teach someone to be an entrepreneur?” – France responds

28 points by liam_boogar 13y ago

6cxs2hd6 13y ago
Individually in one thing. But usually people care about the aggregate: "How can our city/region/country have moar entrepreneurs?" Just like America today has a STEM deficit because being good at math or science isn't as cool as it was back in the send-a-man-to-moon 60s, some places have an entrepreneur deficit because starting a company isn't a positive social signifier. Although government programs aren't always a total waste, I suspect the main point of leverage is a critical mass of "rock star" examples that people want to be like.
- liam_boogar 13y ago
  Interestingly enough, these initiatives are all private
  - 6cxs2hd6 13y ago
    I see. Well actually I didn't mean to sound like I was arguing on the public vs. private axis. In fact my put-a-man-on-the-moon example was, of course, hugely about government. What I mean is I'm skeptical of the impact of efforts (public or private) to "teach entrepreneurship". Yes you can teach that, one by one. But if the desired outcome is to have many more entrepreneurs, you don't get there one by one. You get there by changing the culture to elevate the social status of entrepreneurs. Any efforts -- whether public or public -- need to focus on that, first and foremost.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
seancoleman 13y ago
I'm a faculty member at Arizona State University and teach an entrepreneurship course. I don't believe you can teach someone to be an entrepreneur. Business, management and leadership skills are teachable (all of which certainly contribute to the success of a startup). I believe being an entrepreneur is a combination of certain personality traits and temperaments. It's a maker's passion and drive that defines an entrepreneur. So why do I teach entrepreneurship? Simply to show 40 young adults a worldview which most have not yet been exposed, with the hope that those innate entrepreneurs will choose this different path in life, a path which most parents, professors and friends discredit. I would be fulfilled if just one of my students took the entrepreneurship route and made a large impact on the world over the typical route of accepting a corporate job.
- sentientmachine 13y ago
  The maker's passion and drive can be re-ignited in some extreme circumstances. For example, drop the critter down on a deserted island where their only way off is building a boat. Will the boat get built or will they call for help until they die of thirst?
  - seancoleman 13y ago
    In that case there will certainly be a drive to build a boat, but just in order to survive. It's the innate drive to build that boat without the survival instinct that makes the entrepreneur IMO.
    - flyinglizard 13y ago
      Very nicely put, and describes the difference between people who can excel in a corporate environment (resourceful, adaptive, survivalists) and the risk takers that go out to build stuff just because they feel it needs to be built.
- rikacomet 13y ago
  I have to disagree with you. You said it yourself, being an entrepreneur requires certain traits and temperaments. we all start blank, and based on our circumstances, we learn entrepreneurship. we are never born with it. Being born with it, is just a saying, its not true.. as seen in the history very few successful people had even more successful kids. Entrepreneurship, for me is more like a balance of the things we all possess.
GuiA 13y ago
France really wants to be the next big place in tech startups (like any country really). It's a noble initiative, but speaking as a French citizen who moved to SV roughly 3 years ago (and to the US 5 years ago), I don't believe it has any chance of doing so. Between the backwards government (cf. the dumb stuff that Fleur Pellerin regularly does/say) and the structures that are impossible to work with (a friend of mine, still in Paris, has been fighting for weeks to just get a ~bank account opened~ for his startup), France will not have its Google or Facebook (a catchphrase often used by the politicians) anytime soon. It's a shame, because there is real engineering talent in France (you can thank Napoleon for that), and those who don't want to move abroad (typically England/Germany) end up working for shitty consulting/outsourcing companies ("SSII"), or work in small local web dev agencies. There are programmers from my small French university that I would hire over Stanford students any day of the week for a startup. (this is not a jab at Stanford or anything- I've tutored Stanford undergrads, and many of them are brilliant, but surprisingly not crazily moreso than the top students from my small no-name public university.) People at the top just don't get it, and they come from old school élitiste backgrounds (HEC, Sciences Po Paris, ENA, etc.) that are at the complete opposite of what building an entrepreneur friendly environment would require.
- c2prods 13y ago
  No offence, that's a somewhat classical rant of a French who left 5 years ago ;) Actually France is changing. Regulation is becoming easier to deal with, people are more and more entrepreneurs-friendly, etc. This very article proves it. I agree with you concerning the waste of talent in SSII but that too is evolving. Give France some time!
  - marcosdumay 13y ago
    Sorry, but an official program for creating entrepeuners isn't evidence of anything. Entrepeuner friendly governments normaly have less official programs, of any kind. What's too bad, because Brazil is in exactly that same boat. We also won't have a thriving high-tech industry any time soon.
- fidotron 13y ago
a3voices 13y ago
I believe you can teach anyone with an IQ over 100 to be proficient at anything, if they have enough time and interest.
rikacomet 13y ago
Teach someone who wants to be a entrepreneur - Yes Make someone to take up entrepreneurship - Maybe Yes inception is possible, parents do it all the time.. kids don't realize it many a times. But it doesn't work that way for entrepreneurship. One has to be able to think for himself, everyday.. its not a end to means like other things to be exact, it is creating means with ends everyday. One of the key attitude towards it is the situation where you can't see yourself as anything, except for, as an entrepreneur. Lastly, the method of the teacher should be not to put someone on the track only, but to prepare them to stay there. Its not one night of inspiration, like in writing a song, but multiple nights of cycles of struggle and success.
kendalk 13y ago
"Can you teach someone to be an entrepreneur?" Can a government? No. Can an impersonal bureaucracy? No. Can a major corporation? No. Can a committee? No. Can you? Yes. People can do wonderful things. Inspire others. Open eyes. Light fires. Imagine. Dream. Leave them alone and they can do great things.
Grue3 13y ago
Who would want to be an entrepreneur in a country with 75% tax? If I lived there, I'd rather live on welfare and code some open-sourced stuff all day.
- crazyfrenchy 13y ago
  As a Frenchman, I registered on hackernews just to reply to this comment. I'm tired of this BS propagated by conservatives politicians. There's no 75% tax in France. It never existed, and I don't think it will exist any day soon. There's a 75% tax for income over 1 million euros per year. This means that if I earn 1,000,001 €, I pay the normal rate on 1,000,000 € (I don't know what it is, it might be around 30%, so let's say 30k) plus 75% (meaning 0.75 eurocents), the total being 30,000.75 cents. For 2 million euros, you'll pay 30,000 € + 75% × 1,000,000 = 105,000 €. It's the concept of tax brackets, and I know you have this in the US. Are the US a socialist country? Moreover, France has a lot of billionaires, and the richest woman in the world – at the time I type this comment – is French. <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Liliane_Bettencourt&oldid=593808470#Forbes.E2.80.99_rankings> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Liliane_Bettencour... In addition, there's a job in France called “tax optimizer”, I can't find a link, but in 2011, Liliane Bettencourt paid as much tax as a single Frenchwoman on minimum wage. So I don't think tax is a problem in France for those who wants to be entrepreneurs. And do entrepreneurs really deserve to make that kind of money? Do they really work 300 times harder than their workers? My 2 cents on it, the problem in France – and this is why Germany and the US are succeeding where France is failing – is the lack of support from the government towards small companies. Any labour law, tax law is made for giant groups like Dassault, Orange, Dannon, and so on...
  - c_plus_minus 13y ago
    300k on the first million...
return0 13y ago
As always, the answer is No. However, teaching people to become entrepreneurs is a moderately bad startup idea.

28 points by liam_boogar 13y ago

Individually in one thing. But usually people care about the aggregate: "How can our city/region/country have moar entrepreneurs?" Just like America today has a STEM deficit because being good at math or science isn't as cool as it was back in the send-a-man-to-moon 60s, some places have an entrepreneur deficit because starting a company isn't a positive social signifier. Although government programs aren't always a total waste, I suspect the main point of leverage is a critical mass of "rock star" examples that people want to be like.

liam_boogar 13y ago
Interestingly enough, these initiatives are all private
- 6cxs2hd6 13y ago
  I see. Well actually I didn't mean to sound like I was arguing on the public vs. private axis. In fact my put-a-man-on-the-moon example was, of course, hugely about government. What I mean is I'm skeptical of the impact of efforts (public or private) to "teach entrepreneurship". Yes you can teach that, one by one. But if the desired outcome is to have many more entrepreneurs, you don't get there one by one. You get there by changing the culture to elevate the social status of entrepreneurs. Any efforts -- whether public or public -- need to focus on that, first and foremost.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

seancoleman 13y ago

I'm a faculty member at Arizona State University and teach an entrepreneurship course. I don't believe you can teach someone to be an entrepreneur. Business, management and leadership skills are teachable (all of which certainly contribute to the success of a startup). I believe being an entrepreneur is a combination of certain personality traits and temperaments. It's a maker's passion and drive that defines an entrepreneur. So why do I teach entrepreneurship? Simply to show 40 young adults a worldview which most have not yet been exposed, with the hope that those innate entrepreneurs will choose this different path in life, a path which most parents, professors and friends discredit. I would be fulfilled if just one of my students took the entrepreneurship route and made a large impact on the world over the typical route of accepting a corporate job.

sentientmachine 13y ago
The maker's passion and drive can be re-ignited in some extreme circumstances. For example, drop the critter down on a deserted island where their only way off is building a boat. Will the boat get built or will they call for help until they die of thirst?
- seancoleman 13y ago
  In that case there will certainly be a drive to build a boat, but just in order to survive. It's the innate drive to build that boat without the survival instinct that makes the entrepreneur IMO.
  - flyinglizard 13y ago
    Very nicely put, and describes the difference between people who can excel in a corporate environment (resourceful, adaptive, survivalists) and the risk takers that go out to build stuff just because they feel it needs to be built.
rikacomet 13y ago
I have to disagree with you. You said it yourself, being an entrepreneur requires certain traits and temperaments. we all start blank, and based on our circumstances, we learn entrepreneurship. we are never born with it. Being born with it, is just a saying, its not true.. as seen in the history very few successful people had even more successful kids. Entrepreneurship, for me is more like a balance of the things we all possess.

GuiA 13y ago

France really wants to be the next big place in tech startups (like any country really). It's a noble initiative, but speaking as a French citizen who moved to SV roughly 3 years ago (and to the US 5 years ago), I don't believe it has any chance of doing so. Between the backwards government (cf. the dumb stuff that Fleur Pellerin regularly does/say) and the structures that are impossible to work with (a friend of mine, still in Paris, has been fighting for weeks to just get a ~bank account opened~ for his startup), France will not have its Google or Facebook (a catchphrase often used by the politicians) anytime soon. It's a shame, because there is real engineering talent in France (you can thank Napoleon for that), and those who don't want to move abroad (typically England/Germany) end up working for shitty consulting/outsourcing companies ("SSII"), or work in small local web dev agencies. There are programmers from my small French university that I would hire over Stanford students any day of the week for a startup. (this is not a jab at Stanford or anything- I've tutored Stanford undergrads, and many of them are brilliant, but surprisingly not crazily moreso than the top students from my small no-name public university.) People at the top just don't get it, and they come from old school élitiste backgrounds (HEC, Sciences Po Paris, ENA, etc.) that are at the complete opposite of what building an entrepreneur friendly environment would require.

c2prods 13y ago
No offence, that's a somewhat classical rant of a French who left 5 years ago ;) Actually France is changing. Regulation is becoming easier to deal with, people are more and more entrepreneurs-friendly, etc. This very article proves it. I agree with you concerning the waste of talent in SSII but that too is evolving. Give France some time!
- marcosdumay 13y ago
  Sorry, but an official program for creating entrepeuners isn't evidence of anything. Entrepeuner friendly governments normaly have less official programs, of any kind. What's too bad, because Brazil is in exactly that same boat. We also won't have a thriving high-tech industry any time soon.
fidotron 13y ago

a3voices 13y ago

I believe you can teach anyone with an IQ over 100 to be proficient at anything, if they have enough time and interest.

rikacomet 13y ago

Teach someone who wants to be a entrepreneur - Yes Make someone to take up entrepreneurship - Maybe Yes inception is possible, parents do it all the time.. kids don't realize it many a times. But it doesn't work that way for entrepreneurship. One has to be able to think for himself, everyday.. its not a end to means like other things to be exact, it is creating means with ends everyday. One of the key attitude towards it is the situation where you can't see yourself as anything, except for, as an entrepreneur. Lastly, the method of the teacher should be not to put someone on the track only, but to prepare them to stay there. Its not one night of inspiration, like in writing a song, but multiple nights of cycles of struggle and success.

kendalk 13y ago

"Can you teach someone to be an entrepreneur?" Can a government? No. Can an impersonal bureaucracy? No. Can a major corporation? No. Can a committee? No. Can you? Yes. People can do wonderful things. Inspire others. Open eyes. Light fires. Imagine. Dream. Leave them alone and they can do great things.

Grue3 13y ago

Who would want to be an entrepreneur in a country with 75% tax? If I lived there, I'd rather live on welfare and code some open-sourced stuff all day.

crazyfrenchy 13y ago
As a Frenchman, I registered on hackernews just to reply to this comment. I'm tired of this BS propagated by conservatives politicians. There's no 75% tax in France. It never existed, and I don't think it will exist any day soon. There's a 75% tax for income over 1 million euros per year. This means that if I earn 1,000,001 €, I pay the normal rate on 1,000,000 € (I don't know what it is, it might be around 30%, so let's say 30k) plus 75% (meaning 0.75 eurocents), the total being 30,000.75 cents. For 2 million euros, you'll pay 30,000 € + 75% × 1,000,000 = 105,000 €. It's the concept of tax brackets, and I know you have this in the US. Are the US a socialist country? Moreover, France has a lot of billionaires, and the richest woman in the world – at the time I type this comment – is French. <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Liliane_Bettencourt&oldid=593808470#Forbes.E2.80.99_rankings> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Liliane_Bettencour... In addition, there's a job in France called “tax optimizer”, I can't find a link, but in 2011, Liliane Bettencourt paid as much tax as a single Frenchwoman on minimum wage. So I don't think tax is a problem in France for those who wants to be entrepreneurs. And do entrepreneurs really deserve to make that kind of money? Do they really work 300 times harder than their workers? My 2 cents on it, the problem in France – and this is why Germany and the US are succeeding where France is failing – is the lack of support from the government towards small companies. Any labour law, tax law is made for giant groups like Dassault, Orange, Dannon, and so on...
- c_plus_minus 13y ago
  300k on the first million...

return0 13y ago

As always, the answer is No. However, teaching people to become entrepreneurs is a moderately bad startup idea.