What is an Entrepreneur?

Anybody can become an Entrepreneur - A title that sounds quite exciting and fashionable don't you think?

Many people each year become Entrepreneurs after taking inspiration from some of the greatest including Sir Richard Branson and Lord Alan Sugar. But what is an Entrepreneur?

An Entrepreneur is somebody who starts an organisation, business venture or operation and takes the risk associated with the start-up. These are the people responsible for thinking up the business, its brand and its services but often have to risk their own capital to finance the business in the early stages. They will make all of the key decisions for the business until they decide to employ other people once the business has grown (or if there is sufficient capital at the start-up) and obviously own the equity in their business. However there can be more than one entrepreneur per organisation.

Once the business has had time to grow, the Entrepreneur may take the sideline in the business as others will work for them. At this stage the Entrepreneur of a company may be referred to simply as the owner (Providing they haven't sold the business) or founder and may not be working very hard to get an income from the business.The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and similar titles will control the day-to-day running of the business but you need to remember that most of the time the CEO does not actually own the business despite them often being seen in the Media as the front man. With a business being efficiently ran, many entrepreneurs have multiple income streams because they have the talent and initiative to repeat the start-up process of another potentially successful firm and can dedicate their energy to the next big idea.

However that is on a rather large scale. Many Entrepreneurs solely run very successful firms for their whole life because they don't want anybody else to make the decisions and the business becomes almost part of them. After all it is their time, ideas and finance that go into the business anyway.

Sam Wareham