1 Scratching the startup itch: How I became an incorrigible entrepreneur
This chapter covers
What causes the itch to drop everything and create a startup? For me and many others, it is the desire and belief that you can change the world. It might be the recognition of a problem that you see a way to solve (like Fred Smith, who founded FedEx to deliver urgent packages overnight). It might be a product you think fills a niche that no one else has yet figured out (like Spotify, which “fixed” the pirating problem that the sudden ability to stream music created while at the same time preventing the huge financial catastrophe the music industry saw on the horizon as the sales of CDs dried up). It might be an efficient solution to something you recognize as inefficient (like Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who founded Google, used their patented page-rank algorithm to make theirs by far the most efficient search engine, and obliterated all competition). Or it might just be that you have an insatiable desire to do something really challenging where you get to call the shots and it is 100% up to you to succeed or fail.