The Best Entrepreneur I Know
There's a lot more to entrepreneurship than the weird little bubble of software startups. Entrepreneurs are just people who take a chance in order to make a real difference.<p>I grew up poor, and one of the hardest things about being poor is that there are so few role models for success. Except for teachers, I didn't know anyone educated. Except for the people my father worked for (and mostly hated), I didn't know anyone wealthy or successful. More of the grown men I knew were failures, criminals, and addicts than successes.<p>As a smart child in this environment, teachers and other authority figures expected intelligence to lead to obedience, and were frustrated that I didn't care that much about their rules, that I wasn't interested in being especially good at being mediocre. With a slightly different twist in the wind, I might well have wound up a criminal myself, although I like to think I'd have been a very good one.<p>Even when I left my hometown to go to college, it took me years to adjust to a "normal" life. And it took me years more to realize again what I knew instinctively as a child - that succeeding at mediocrity wasn't a worthwhile life.<p>The men and women who have made a point of being social entrepreneurs, of being role models in communities that desperately need them - they're better, braver, and tougher than most of the founders we fawn over here. And they'll make a more meaningful contribution to the world.