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(image by Michael Gorzka)

While reading through my Twitter timeline recently, I saw one tweet that really caught my attention. It was a response to a Quora question which asked something along the lines of, “Do entrepreneurs just say they’re passionate about their venture in order to get money?”. Well I digress, it was a bit harsher than that. It was more like, “Is ‘i’m so passionate for this idea’ a BS story from founders?” The individual expanded on this in a way which made their question actually seem reasonable. They explained by asking how can anyone be passionate about sending and storing files or making invoices, etc. Airbnb and Paypal were mentioned directly as were a few others. Their main point was, how can companies like these have founders who claim to have passion for what they do? Although I didn’t agree with all of their examples, there have been times where I ask myself, “is this company serious?”. So I read on.

David Rose, founder of Gust, responded and told a story about a debt collector he overheard on a flight. He was amazed to hear how a debt collector, whom many would consider the job to be scum, was so enthusiastic about what it is that he had founded. It wasn’t about the fact that he made very good money, but that he was happy to help people who made the wrong credit decisions in life and felt they deserved to be put back on the right track. This put things in perspective in a few ways.

Any vision can have passion. Passion is in part about recognizing an opportunity and the thrill of figuring out how to make it work while adding value to customers in some way. The world is full of all kinds of industries and different individuals with varying tastes. Some people like comic books. In 1993 when the first mention of an X-men movie came about, nobody would have imagined how Stan Lee’s passion would finally reach monumental heights in a few more years. I once read about an entrepreneur who’s company buys and sells used cardboard boxes. There were a few years where it seemed like the company would go under, but the enthusiasm and optimism of the founder has turned that around and created a booming business.

In this world, there are numerous possibilities and opportunities that can lead to success. Chances are, that just about anything you could create has a market. It’s not about the product itself, It’s about you believing in the vision you have for it and about how you execute a plan to achieve it. How in depth you know your niche and what ways you plan to expand upon it are the fundamentals of this, but those two things alone would be nothing without a strong drive to see it through. That drive is the essence of passion and It would be nearly impossible for any company to succeed, if the people behind it didn’t have the desire to.

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Tags: entrepreneurs, startups

This entry was posted on Monday, April 23rd, 2012 at 2:30 pm and is filed under Entrepreneur Inspiration, Entrepreneur Motivation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.