I got the pleasure to listen to Future Thinkers Podcast with special guest David Orban. Who is David Orban you must be wondering? David is an investor, entrepreneur and a thought leader in disruptive technologies. Mr. Orban is the founder as well as the managing partner at an investment firm for disruptive startups called Network Society Ventures. David Orban is also a member of faculty as well as an advisor at Singularity University.
While I was listening to the podcast, I found it very interesting listening to David’s perception on entrepreneurship. For instance, Dav said, “Entrepreneurship is about risk taking.” He then proceed to use an example, if you started a company at age 17/18 years old or are in you 20s/30s and want to call yourself an entrepreneur, by definition David said, “you should have failed already because if you have not already, that means you are not creative enough.” Meaning that the idea you came up with cannot evolve into successful ones, however, it is possible after failing and discarding the extreme statistical when the idea became very successful right away. It is interesting to hear this because this example David talks about is not the first time I have heard of it. In fact, when my brother was just starting his company, which he started Junior year in college, he would tell us this whenever a problem arose and he was never worried.
It is interesting further on in the podcast when he talks about based on the possibilities of the world, he observes what is possible. Meaning that if an idea pops into your head, and it is currently impossible to become a reality, then you need to start thinking, what are the things you need to create and make that idea possible. That shows an entrepreneur thinking I believe because you want to create something that currently is not available or seems impossible to the rest of the world but in reality nothing is impossible unless you find a solution to it. The great thing is that nowadays there are now more opportunities for people to be creative and not have to worry about funding because there are grants, fellowships or even challenges. Before, it was harder to start a company because it would have huge upfront costs and be a huge risk to take. However, now due the more available funding ways as well as the rise of new technologies. David explained in the podcast, that due to the new technologies, the cost of being an entrepreneur is decreasing and used an example where it would take millions of dollars to test the idea of a new company. However, today it can be done almost for free due to online platforms that are available that tools let people test and discard ideas rapidly if it’s not worth it. Then when it does work, they are able to take the next steps into building it.
This podcast great to listen to and I would recommend people to listen to it. I learned a lot and David Orban used a lot of great examples to understand more of what he was saying.