Entrepreneurship to the Extreme: Serial Entrepreneurs

You hear about serial killers, serial lovers and etc. Serial Entrepreneurs are another breed of entrepreneurs that take the whole activity to another level. It is a pretty elusive way of being an entrepreneur and only few people like doing that. In Singapore, there are some serial entrepreneurs (to date, I know at least two, one in the healthcare industry and the other surprisingly a bar owner and specializes in niche goods). So, what kind of features does these kind of entrepreneurs need to possess? Here is the article to tell it all.

Serial Entrepreneurs are a group of wierd people. They just like starting up new enterprises. After making them successful, they either sell it to some companies or pass the baton of leadership to a new management team. In the end, they move on and start another new enterprise. There are a few characteristics in this kind of entrepreneurs which you can identify whether they are serial entrepreneurs:

1. They just get bored too easily or hate being stuck in management: Most serial entrepreneurs dislike the idea of managing a business for a long time. When they grow a company to a certain stage, everything becomes too routine for them. In the process, they need to find something new and challenging to do. They will always keep a look out for new projects and once they see a new opportunity, they move on. Some entrepreneurs like to set up multiple businesses to learn different things for themselves. If you want some advice on that, Weichang, our fellow co-founder is one who has been dabbling from online tuition to push-cart businesses.
2. They win a few big battles but lose many small ones: Because of their endless pursuit with new ideas and challenges, serial entrepreneurs have this tendency to splatter into many projects, and end up with a few wins and many loses. Unless you have the guts of a trader and a thick skin of facing up to failures, you can consider becoming one. However, one distinguishing trait about them compared to 99% of the entrepreneurs who failed, is that they always rebound from failures. To them, it is really does not matter as long as there is a new project out there waiting for them or an issue which spurs their passion to change things in the marketplace.
3. Investors like their track record Successful serial entrepreneurs do not need to find investors, and they are pursued endlessly by the venture capitalists and business angels. To become this kind of successful serial entrepreneur, you need to establish a good track record of successful small companies. In Silicon Valley and Cambridge, some technology entrepreneurs in the IT and biotech tend to have no problem in finding money for new ventures and ideas because of their impressive track records.
4. They don’t build Google or YouTube, but they keep the ecosystem going: Very few serial entrepreneurs will ever reach the level of the top entrepreneurs in the world. If you want examples, I can think of Richard Branson (with his Virgin companies dabbling from radio, video, flights, cruise and space travel) and Robert Noyce (co-founder of Intel, who keep moving on to work in small enterprises in Silicon Valley). Most serial entrepreneurs prefer not to be known, and party in the Bahamas whenever they please. You think of them as extreme sportsmen or sportswomen.

If you recall reading my last post about niche markets, that’s a place which most serial entrepreneurs are into. Of course, most serial entrepreneurs will become business angels or venture capitalists after a few life cycles of successful startups. They bring in experience and also a different kind of mindset to the market. They want things to be as simple as possible and that’s how they can always exit from their startups whenever they see a new horizon knocking on their corner.

So, if you possess that kind of attributes, a serial entrepreneur can be an interesting career option.

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