Question

Why do you think inventors, scientists, and engineers often times struggle to start a new business...

Why do you think inventors, scientists, and engineers often times struggle to start a new business venture?

Homework Answers

Answer #1

These are the challenges these people are facing:

1. Abandoning another career
If you’re going to dedicate yourself to starting and nurturing a business to success, it’s going to be nearly impossible to simultaneously manage another career. You might be able to manage the infancy of your business on the side, during weeknights and weekends, but if you want a chance of growing significantly, invariably you’ll have to quit your day job.

Walking away from a promising, steady long-term opportunity for something unpredictable is scary -- especially if you’ve never run a business before. Unfortunately, there’s no easy way to address this. Just think through your decision logically, and don’t ignore your instincts.

2. Financing
Experienced entrepreneurs don’t have it easy when it comes to funding a new business, but they do have a few advantages over newcomers. They might have a pool of capital from a business they previously sold or a steady stream of revenue they can use to fund a new business’s cash flow.

Even if their first business went under, they’ve likely made investment contacts and client connections necessary to give them a leg up in a new enterprise. As a new entrepreneur, you’ll be starting from scratch, which means you’ll need to start networking like crazy and thinking through all your possible funding options before landing on one.

3. Teambuilding
This is especially hard if you’ve never run or managed a team before, but even if you have management experience, picking the right team for a startup is stressful and difficult. It’s not enough to find candidates who fill certain roles -- you also need to consider their cost to the business, their culture fit and how they’ll work as part of your overall team. Such considerations are exceptionally hard when you’re under the pressure of filling those positions as soon as possible.

4. Being the visionary
As the founder of your startup, you’ll be expected to come up with the ideas. When a competitor emerges, it will be your responsibility to come up with a response plan. When your team hits an impenetrable obstacle, your job will be to come up with an alternative plan to move forward.

This demands on-the-spot creative thinking -- which should be an oxymoron, but entrepreneurs rarely have the luxury of time. The less experience you have, the more pressure you’ll feel from this, and the harder time you’ll have coming up with acceptable plans.

5. Dealing with the unknown
How long will your business exist? How profitable will your business be? Will customers like your product? Will you be able to give yourself a steady paycheck? None of these questions has a solid, reliable answer, even in startups based on great ideas with all the resources they’d theoretically need.

That unknown factor means your job stability is going to plummet, and many of your long-term plans will remain in flux as new developments emerge. Dealing with this volatility is one of the hardest parts of emerging as a new entrepreneur.

6. Loneliness
It’s a rarely mentioned problem of entrepreneurship, and many new business owners aren’t prepared for it until it happens. Being an entrepreneur is lonely. It’s a singular position, so you won’t have teammates to rely on (completely). You’ll be working lots of hours, so you won’t see your family as often. And your employees will be forced to remain at a bit of a distance.

7. Rule-making
It’s fun to be the boss until you have to enforce something. Sooner or later, you’ll have to come up with the rules your business follows, from how many vacation days your workers get to what the proper protocol is when filing a complaint about a coworker. These details aren’t fun to create, and they aren’t fun to think about, but they are necessary for every business.

8. Decision-making
Believe it or not, this is probably the most stressful challenge on this list. New entrepreneurs are forced to make hundreds of decisions a day, from big, company-impacting decisions, to tiny, hour-affecting ones. Decision fatigue is a real phenomenon, and most new entrepreneurs will experience it if they aren’t prepared for the new level of stress.

Know the answer?
Your Answer:

Post as a guest

Your Name:

What's your source?

Earn Coins

Coins can be redeemed for fabulous gifts.

Not the answer you're looking for?
Ask your own homework help question
Similar Questions
Are scientists studying issues that are critical to development? What do you think would be an...
Are scientists studying issues that are critical to development? What do you think would be an interesting topic of human development to study? Why?
Why do you think the Supreme Court justices often write concurring and/or dissenting opinions in a...
Why do you think the Supreme Court justices often write concurring and/or dissenting opinions in a case?
Why do you think adolescence has the reputation for being a ”stormy” and “stressful” (and often...
Why do you think adolescence has the reputation for being a ”stormy” and “stressful” (and often “rebellious”) period? Do you think adolescence is generally stormy and stressful? How would you characterize your own adolescence? Outline some 3+ factors which may have made it this way?
Retail grocery business will struggle to be able to raise prices given that their products are...
Retail grocery business will struggle to be able to raise prices given that their products are identical. How do you think firms in these markets will be able to react to changes in the market based on identical products?
prepare a Business Plan. Think of a financial venture that you always wanted to start and...
prepare a Business Plan. Think of a financial venture that you always wanted to start and develop a business plan to be your blueprint.All sections of a business plan as described in the presentation are equally important, however, for the purposes of this project you will include only the sections listed below: The Executive Summary The Business The Market Analysis Organizational Plan Marketing Plan Financial Plan Perform the following calculations for inclusion in the appropriate section of your plan: Marketing...
Why do you think the Project life cycle is often depicted as starting slow, peaking and...
Why do you think the Project life cycle is often depicted as starting slow, peaking and then dropping back down at the end? What does this mean?
Why business plan is important to start a new business and what would be the prerequisites...
Why business plan is important to start a new business and what would be the prerequisites to write up an ideal business plan
Do you think using a Stakeholder Management Approach to business ethics is the best approach? Why...
Do you think using a Stakeholder Management Approach to business ethics is the best approach? Why do you think so?
Why do entrepreneurs form teams when they start a company? Is a more diverse team better...
Why do entrepreneurs form teams when they start a company? Is a more diverse team better than a team with similar members for a business venture?
Why do you think policy makers (especially Members of Congress) often list simplicity as a highly...
Why do you think policy makers (especially Members of Congress) often list simplicity as a highly desirable goal of tax policy yet again and again pass tax bills that move in the opposite direction?