Desire. You want something badly for years. Success never comes and you start to not care anymore. Finally you get some things that you wanted, but the moment is gone and the opportunity seems like just a silly dream. From this new vantage point and understanding of the world, you see that the success you desired was just a quaint, stupid idea. you start to understand that at the top of the hill there is nowhere to go but back down, so why even climb? You start to live a better life and think about the things and people around you. People matter. Entrepreneurship is about people.

starting a company.

Long hours, crazy ideas, challenging standards, asking tough questions, receiving doubt from everyone on the outside, sleepless nights, cheap food, tired and bleeding eyes... but the passion to keep going forward, the desire to keep doing what you believe is great work, keeps you going harder and harder. Relentless pursuit of product, perfection, idea, change.

True entrepreneurship is about building great things, great companies, starting movements, changing things, so that long after you are gone, your legacy remains. And the products you build continue to grow. True entrepreneurs experience great sacrifice, for only they know that in order to achieve greatness, a part of them must go into their products. And it is this personal sacrifice for perfection that differentiates the titans from all the rest.

"The pursuit of opportunity without regard to resources currently controlled." --Stevenson

Fucking hard

Amen to that, brother.

Then again, if it were easy, would it be worth doing?

Nothing in life worth doing is

Counterexample: playing with your kids.

I think hard and worth doing are pretty loosely coupled. There are certainly lots of things that are hard and yet not really worth doing. And there are a good number that are worth doing and yet easy.

Playing with kids is _hard_, but necessary.

Certainly it is not necessary for kids that adults play with them. Nor teach them to walk nor correct them when learning to speak.

"...jumping off a cliff and building a parachute on the way down" - unknown

(not sure who said this, if you know pls comment so this can be duly attributed.)

Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn cofounder said this

Not a secret club house

looking into the market and seeing a howling void, and having the audacity and bullheadedness to forgo every reasonable bit of sound advice and cultural standards you are exposed to and try to fill that gap using every last remnant of your fiscal and mental being--hopeful all the while (despite better consul) that you have enough material available for this construction and that you will not be totally consumed in its deployment, another dried-out tumbleweed rolling away on the winds of venture.

"entrepreneurship is about turning what excites you in life into capital, so that you can do more of it and move forward with it" - Richard Branson

Finding a market demand that is inefficiently addressed by suppliers and exploiting it, preferably in a profitable and/or defensible manner.

acting on opportunities that others don't see.

Well said. The key is to always keep an eye towards the future, and that is something which is easy to forget.

Creating Value and then Propagating Value exponentially and finally Capturing the Value as Wealth by starting a company.

not something I have yet succeeded at.

1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.

the alternative to unemployment.

hard; let's go shopping.

An addiction to financially sustainable problem solving or world changing.

Reading HN at 2:26AM on a Saturday Night in New York City.

Solving the problems of humanity in a sustainable way.

to put all your resources where your mouth is

the alchemy of trying to turn inspiration into a product or service more valuable than the sum of its parts

Increasing Revenue while Reducing Cost

"location, location"

How I hate that....

the purest form of meritocracy.

Fun!

Patience and Perseverance.

spending time doing shit, not thinking/talking about doing shit.

getting all the organs in the body to work at the same time

something nobody under 18 should be told about.

But hey, what do I know?

like living at home with your parents to save money.

the only career worth spending your life doing.

taking on the risk of starting a company.

people who've come together, as if by karma, to work on an idea whose time has come and the rest of the world conspires to make it happen.

putting your money where your mouth is

...putting other people's money where your mouth is

Priceless.

the highest high and the lowest low.

A salmon run.

building a sustainable business

Anti-Corp

not being afraid to fail

running a business.

hard but rewarding

betting on an idea

buzzword bingo!

being different

an attitude

idk