Hi and welcome! This is Charlie Trochlil's final project for Intro to Entrepreneurship. I've built this as a wiki for getting started in entrepreneurship. Whether you're just having an inkling of a project concept, or your venture is starting to take off, this is meant to be a fun, casual way to pick up a little know-how. You can explore topics sequentially as they fit into the entrepreneurial process, search the project with the 🔍 at the top, or scroll through the topic index at the bottom of this page.
We're going to broadly define entrepreneurship as a process for making money that involves creation or execution of business ideas that are new or innovate on existing ones. That's a pretty broad definition, and the breadth is intentional. Some entrepreneurs are inventors, creating entirely new products, services, markets, businesses. Some entrepreneurs are just savvy businesspeople who can bring together the right combination of people, concepts, and resources to make money in a novel way.¹
Short answer: yes.
Long answer: while there are certain things about the way entrepreneurs think that are a little bit different, experts say that entrepreneurship is more of a practice than a personality so anybody is capable of applying the concepts we'll discuss here.$^2$
If you don't know where to begin, you'll want to get started with the Entrepreneurial Process. You can basically follow that topic-by-topic to get a full picture. If you're looking for anything specific, try some keywords in the search bar at the top or skim through the topic index at the bottom of this page.
As we work through the steps of creating a venture you'll want to, at some point, talk about what you're working on. From a business perspective, there is no real risk to calling something a 'company' or a 'startup', but it might involve some reputation risk for you. It's often wiser to refer to things as 'projects'. As we'll soon learn, the process of creating ventures involves a lot of failure. Somebody who's always creating 'startups' that don't go anywhere is... seemingly not doing great. Somebody with a lot of projects is always learning, and trying new things. You want to be a person who's always on a "new project" not trying to build "another startup."$^3$