In 2020 I will be fortunate enough to work with my 400th entrepreneur (today the count is 381).
Through my work with The Difference Incubator, Business for Development, SPARK Deakin and an array of freelance clients, I get to walk alongside some incredible entrepreneurial minds as they create and reshape their businesses.
Simultaneously, most of what I see celebrated about entrepreneurship is either gross or irrelevant; hustle-porn that promises a Lamborghini in the future in exchange of misery today.
This has not been my experience of actual entrepreneurship.
It mistakes both the highs and lows – what makes a good entrepreneur isn’t their eventual fame and material possessions, and what makes a bad entrepreneur isn’t their lack of celebrity.
I work in parts of the world where entrepreneurship is the antidote to poverty and inequality, rather than a pathway to a mansion and a large following.

I’m not alone in this observation, groups like Zebras Unite are creating a great community that rejects tacky entrepreneurial aspirations.
Silicon Valley coined the term “Unicorn”, a mythical creature representing rapid growth and high valuations for new companies.
In Zebras Unite’s own words:

Why zebras?

• To state the obvious: unlike unicorns, zebras are real.

• Zebra companies are both black and white: they are profitable and improve society. They won’t sacrifice one for the other.

• Zebras are also mutualistic: by banding together in groups, they protect and preserve one another. Their individual input results in stronger collective output.

• Zebra companies are built with peerless stamina and capital efficiency, as long as conditions allow them to survive.”

They have a great table that compares the two:

Along these same lines, here are some of the attributes, choices and skills I like to celebrate about the founders I know:

Courage
The act of starting something new, of taking risks, of attempting something that is statistically probable to fail, takes a lot of courage.
Starting your own business means saying no to safety and the comfort of salary (which Nassim Taleb argues is the second most addictive thing in society behind heroin), in order to say yes to something that you don’t fully understand.

Creativity
Entrepreneurs see the world differently, opting to create something new in order to better address a problem.
When we look at the community leaders who are transforming their villages through new businesses, we see creativity in action.
These people see opportunities that others miss, sell new products or target new types of customers, and use previously unfamiliar business tools to increase their impact.

Humility
Good entrepreneurs are willing to be wrong.
The customer might show them that they’re wrong.
Their staff might show them that they’re wrong.
Their board might show them that they’re wrong.
Their beneficiaries might show them that they’re wrong.
It takes serious humility to accept this guidance, but it’s what sets them up for success in the future.

Care For The Customer
Established companies often try to boost profits by cutting corners – taking away as much as they can from the customer.
Good entrepreneurs start from a place of compassion, curiosity and generosity – making things that people need or enjoy.
They walk in their customer’s shoes, with a genuine desire to help.
This is often done in the form of unpaid research – what Pamela Hartigan called “apprenticing with the problem”, and it is this apprenticeship that makes someone qualified to create an appropriate solution.

Financial Sustainability
An entrepreneur who employs a team carries a huge responsibility – the livelihoods of these people and their families.
This may not seem like such a risk in a country like Australia, but in the developing world the stakes are much higher.
I’ve seen many great entrepreneurs grapple with this privilege/burden, as they realise that remaining financially sustainable isn’t just a target, it’s part of the commitment to provide a safe workplace for their team.
Nobody makes a profit by accident, it takes a lot of care and diligence to ensure that there’s always cash in the bank.

Environmental Sustainability
Business owners who have no regard for the environment save money.
They cut corners, take the cheapest options, use unsustainable manufacturing techniques, contribute to landfill, and sell items that are designed to fail.
I applaud business owners who go out of their way to design better alternatives, even if these mean more time, more compromise and potentially smaller margins.
My belief is that the market and the law will soon reward them as well, but for now these decisions are costly and honourable.

Setting A Healthy Culture
What percentage of companies do you reckon have healthy cultures?
From my own experiences and those of my friends, I’d estimate that fewer than 40% of workplaces are supportive environments.
Culture is so hard to get right, and I’m always impressed by founders who manage to set up an atmosphere that isn’t built on fear, shame or undue pressure.
Like profits, these cultures do not come about by accident – it takes a dedicated effort to kickstart a new culture that uplifts employees and boosts their results.

Making The Right Call Even When It Sucks
This is the entrepreneur who recalls their product when they realise it is defective, who cuts their own income when times are tough in order to stay afloat, who admits they were wrong when their impact model doesn’t pan out.
A business owner will be faced with a constant pipeline of choices where a lie or a blind eye would be the easiest solution – and yet they take the harder route because it feels right.
Sometimes the issue comes through no fault of their own (e.g. a recession, an issue with a partner, a staff member does something unacceptable), yet the entrepreneur takes responsibility for rectifying the situation.
Even more impressively, they go through this incredibly difficult process without disturbing or scaring their team, bearing the burden as quietly as possible.
That deserves recognition.

Vice versa, here are the attributes, choices and skills that I find off-putting:

Material Success
The reason to get into entrepreneurship is not to acquire cars, watches, holidays or property.
If that’s your aim, go for a field with a higher likelihood of financial returns like high frequency trading, then click the little cross icon on the top of this tab.
By all means, you can enjoy your money, but the tokens you buy are not the measurement of a person’s success.

Unsustained Growth
Growth gets celebrated like it’s always a good thing, but in a lot of cases companies grow too quickly and end up contracting a form of illness.
This might look like cashflow issues, toxic cultures, awful hiring practices, deceptive trading, or going into serious debt to fuel an ambitious expansion.
Bigger is not better if it means you have to adjust your ethics.

Hitting The Jackpot And Claiming It Was Inevitable
Bo Burnham’s advice on this matter is perfect:

“Don’t take advice from people like me…who got very lucky.
Taylor Swift telling you to follow your dreams… is like a lottery winner saying:
‘Liquidize your assets! Buy Powerball tickets! It works!’”

Yes some startups turn into unicorns, but the vast majority don’t.
Survivorship bias means we only hear the stories about the companies that hit the jackpot, not the 99.9% of startups that did most things right but still failed.

Hustle-Porn
It’s a loaded but unfortunately apt term – an exaggerated misrepresentation of reality, designed to make you feel like you’re involved in something without actually putting in any work yourself.
You’ll see these shared online, designed to “celebrate” 80-hour weeks, obsessions with financial reward, ridiculing people who have jobs, talking about becoming a millionaire like it’s a certainty.
These aren’t helpful, and reading/sharing them doesn’t make you any more successful.

Ego
People are imperfect, especially people who are subjected to constant stresses.
Heropreneurship (celebrating individual founders like they are demi-gods) is unhelpful for all parties; it either fuels egos or creates anxieties, both of which lead to founders feeling the need to misrepresent the truth in the future.
I highly recommend taking inspiration from a diverse collection of sources – the companies you admire were built by many people not just a solo founder, and no entrepreneur can be a perfect role model for all of your questions.

Blind Perseverance
Persevering with a business is not always the right thing to do.
Yes, sometimes there are success stories from entrepreneurs who ignored all of the signs and ended up rich, but these are the rare exceptions.
When the market or your support circle tell you something, it’s wise to listen.
The opposite of persevering doesn’t have to be quitting, but rather pivoting to a business model that can be sustainable and impactful.

What strikes me about these qualities is that the most impressive acts and decisions happen when times are tough, when nobody else is around, when it would be easiest to cave in.
They’re also accessible to everybody – you can reap the rewards of a good culture, of creative thinking and care for the customer, whereas only a small fraction of the market can end up with a billion dollar valuation.
When talking to founders, consider celebrating the hard choices they’ve made, the times they could have taken a shortcut but didn’t, or the kindness they’ve shown their team.

They might think you’re strange at first, but it will mean a lot.