Entrepreneur spirit

Abstract

Entrepreneurship is an important part of the world today. More and more companies started in a garage and moved up to the top of the corporate leader. And a big part of it is due to entrepreneur spirit. But this spirit is nothing new: it started in the Renaissance era with the marketplace and went through several phases. Today, entrepreneurship is about sustainability and environment preservation. The entrepreneurship process relies on three main factors: Opportunity, Commitment, and Skills. This three factors must be present to ensure a good quality and great profit. When done right, entrepreneur spirit can yield great results and create great companies, like FedEx, the transportation giant, or Veniam, a portuguese start-up that aims to connect all vehicles.

Introduction

An entrepreneur is someone that nurture and idea or a product from conception and helps it grow and go to market. He takes almost all of the risks, but, in return, if everything goes well, receives all the fame and most of the monetary rewards. His importance is immeasurable to society: brings to market new and different products and services, develops new industries and creates various job opportunities. But, one may ask, how did entrepreneurship get to the state it currently is and how can one become a successful entrepreneur?

Process

Entrepreneurship is the exploration of opportunities not yet explored.

It's the capacity to explore changes and needs of the society at the right time. It requires the combination of several factors such as:

• Opportunity

• Interest, passion and commitment

• Skills

The combination of these three important factors should result in a product/service that:

• Has unique characteristics: it must have new or differentiating qualities;

• Creates a great impact influencing the client to buy the product at any cost;

• Is profitable for the producer.

"Entrepreneurship has been pointed out as a key contributor to sustained economic growth and development as it not only creates employment, but increased spending in markets, knowledge transfers, employment and innovation. (...) Findings suggest that economic growth, development and entrepreneurship seem to be inexplicably connected. "

In 1965, Frederick W. Smith, a young college student, faced the problem where there was no way to quickly transport fragile and sensitve products, like medical equipment and eletronics, in time span of 1 to 2 days, in the 60's. The engineering companies and hospitals could only resource to local products or had to wait weeks for a product to arrive.. In this scenario, the idea of fast air transportation came up, in a curricular project, which was solely grade a C (american grading system).

After 8 years in the military and aviation sector, nourishing his knowledge and skill, leading him to acquire an aviation sales firm. A few years passed and the "Federal Express" startup, after some struggle to find financial back-up, set off from the ground on April 17, 1973. The profit only emerged 2 years later, however 1980's they became the first company to make 1 billion USD in revenues.[8]

A clearly example that the perseverance and belief in the idea, could lead to great accomplishments.

Crowdfunding

Crowdfunding is a way of getting the necessary financing for a project, a business or a solidarity cause, through the fundraising via internet. It is a collaborative financing that avoids doing bank loans. Usually, the fundraising organizer should decide the minimum value of fundraising and the deadline to achieve it.

Now a days, there are several platforms of fundraising with different purposes and different policies according to the fundraising cause or if it meets the defined deadline [10] [11].

All of these fundraising platforms serve different purposes such as small business as startups, innovative products, personal financial needs, charity institutions, etc. They help people that have an idea/project/business and need financial help to launch and achieve their goals and ambitions.

Therefore, fundraising platforms promote entrepreneurship and increases the bounding and mutual help inside a community and between communities.

In Portugal there are plenty of ways to show new ideias, specially on IT area. WebSummit, APDC Digital Business Congress, PT Meeting, etc are some examples of technology fairs where you can share your idea and who knows, get an investor.

Venture capital advantages

As a complement to the credit, this kind of capital has some advantages [18], such as:

• The capital is suitable for the company needs;

• It does not require a guarantee;

• As it strengthens the the structure of the company it will ease the access to new kinds of funding;

• It's an element of credibility towards the market.

Bussiness Angel associations

In Portugal exist several organiations that mediate and compile the main sources for Business Angels and Venture Capital being the most renouned:

Business Models of the 21 century

With the digital era, a new type of business came to life. The market changed completely, and tech companies started to "rule" it. So, its logical that new and disruptive business models were created. In this section, some of this models will be discussed.

Conclusion

As seen, entrepreneur spirit plays a major role on the civilization evolution, bringing life to a simple idea and making it useful to everyone and making life easier or, simply, more comfortable.

Entrepreneurs, someone who undertakes the risk of starting a new business venture, follow a passion they have after identifying something that can be improved on people’s life. Then, with a good, diverse, motivated, and fully committed team, they are able create something new improving everyone’s life quality. Entrepreneurship is high-risk, but also can be high reward as it serves to generate economic wealth, growth, and innovation [21]

Entrepreneurship is something rare but vital to create economic growth and innovation.