Becoming a tech entrepreneur sounds grand. What you need to know to not mess it up

Everyone wants to be a tech entrepreneur.?

Tech entrepreneurs are like the modern gods, living above anyone else, with their heads in the clouds, enjoying elevated social status, and having fun rides of their lives. If they are successful they can amass fortunes, enjoy unmatched adventures, luxuries and privileges, and become national (or international) celebrities of a blinding brightness.?

Even moderately successful, wannabe entrepreneurs get a taste of high life, with access to more resources (salary, gadgets), reverence of their paid admirers (employees) and thrilling experiences–all paid with easy investor money. Who would want to slog at a soul sucking 9-5 job, if you can become a celebrated speaker, be featured in magazines, enjoy free lunches, international travel, and taste the real freedom–instead of having to deal daily with a half-wit demanding boss?

Being a successful entrepreneur is one of the best careers of the modern day. And to be a successful entrepreneur, you need to be in tech.?

But there’s a difference between a wannabe entrepreneur and the real deal.?

To become a truly successful tech entrepreneur it takes more than just an idea for a new app, digital platform or service. It requires smart work with quality, dedication, perseverance and at least moderately good execution. It also takes some luck with timing, and a clear vision grounded in understanding of both the market and technology.?

And not everyone has that, or knows where to look for it.

Over my 20+ years of experience working with founders, startups and established organisations I met a handful of true innovators with all the qualities required to achieve sustainable competitive advantage. They have become real stars, redefining their industries, and riding on the waves of success.?

Many others enjoyed their undeniably cool but short-lived ride, like a surfer who catches a great wave once, and spends all the remaining time trying to catch another. They raised some money, but didn’t know how to convert it into working tech underpinning a sustainable profit-making machine. They spent hundreds of thousands or millions of pounds, and years of their lives, with nothing to show for at the end of the day.?

They failed to convert a lucky strike into a lasting success.

They squandered their chance.?All because of simple mistakes that could have been easily avoided.

What was their greatest mistake? The answer to this is deceptively simple: Not recruiting, or failing to retain the right people.?

People who knew more in the areas where they lacked knowledge. People who were able and willing to provide fresh perspectives and challenge their thinking. People who could complement them, cover their blind spots, and counterbalance their biases. Experienced masters of their trade with foresight, who could provide an early reality check, spot problems and resolve them before they got out of hand. Potential (and hence scary) dream-poppers who could prevent wasting time and money going in dead-end directions.

And the reason they failed at this was usually the same: fear created by their ego.

What often gets in the way of becoming a successful entrepreneur is the fear of not being the brightest star of the show. Pain of having to admit that they have limitations. Bad feeling of letting someone else do their job without the need for micromanagement. Inability to listen to opposing voices. The need to be the smartest person in the room. Lack of courage to challenge their own belief traps and delusions.??

Other common traits are the inherent lack of trust in their staff, and reluctance to spend money on people who deserve to be paid well for their superior skills and capabilities. This is sometimes a result of genuine financial concern, but more often a small-minded greed, when they refused to pay others if it meant that they needed to make some compromises on their own compensation packages. Whenever there was a choice to be made between the needs of the company and their own gain, they’ve chosen the predictable path of least resistance.

One of the examples of an essential member of any start up team is a technical co-founder, or a CTO.?

Any budding tech entrepreneur who lacks a solid technology background needs one. It would be crazy to embark on a tech-enabled journey without solid skills relating to the core of the business. Some still do.

Some others did hire a technical co-founder, or a CTO, or more often a bunch in a quick succession–but were never able to work with them for longer than a few months. They might have gone through as many as 7 or 8 of CTOs in the space of 2-3 years, without implementing any of the advice and insights that they brought to the table. No good CTO would persevere in a situation like this.

Some of the relationships ended in a conflict over unmet promises–share options, formal status / responsibility or compensation. Unsuccessful founders always found perfectly good justifications for needing to fire their best staff, or recruit an inferior candidate over a more skilled, but more expensive one. And always felt that they were the victims in the end.

What they failed to notice was that the common element in all those failed situations and broken relationships was always the same: them.

If you want to be a successful tech entrepreneur, you need to master yourself.

To do this you need to develop a practice to observe and monitor your habits, emotions and patterns. This is a deceptively difficult task, and a topic for a separate article (or thousands of books that are available online), but generally some form of mindfulness training may help. I recommend the method developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn, a famous medicine professor and an accomplished Buddhist meditator, who created a secular mindfulness method and brought it into the non-religious mainstream (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Kabat-Zinn).?

Whatever method you choose, you need to take full responsibility for all that is happening to you. Objectively recognise your own strengths and limitations. Create systems to compensate for your biases. Surround yourself with people who are smarter than you, who can cover your gaps and blind spots. Focus on the long term success of your company, rather than on a short term gratification.?

Tame your ego, and get in control. It is the most difficult, but also the most important thing you can do to achieve success in business, and in your life. Just as Leonardo da Vinci famously said:

“The height of a man's success is gauged by his self-mastery; the depth of his failure by his self-abandonment.”

Do this and you will set yourself on a firm path towards success. Do not and you will sabotage your chance, hard work and years of sacrifices.?

May you succeed in this and all other endeavours!

P.S. What are your thoughts and experiences with building a tech business, or working with tech entrepreneurs? Are there other factors that are key to success or failure? Let me and other readers know–this way we can learn from each other.?