OK, let's say I want to change the world and I decide starting a company is the best way to do that. I guess that means I'm not an entrepreneur, huh?
"But the sooner an entrepreneur and young budding CEOs realise that there really is only one metric that counts in this game, the sooner we will get beyond the recent Web 2.0 silliness and thereby give birth to a revitalised start up environment where some truly amazing, long lasting companies will be created."
To the contrary, the Web 2.0 silliness is a result of people thinking like you. Most Web 2.0 companies (reddit, twitter, youtube) are time-wasters. If entrepreneurs were looking to change the world, they'd be working on something real like online education.
If you force a `definition` of a term to explain every possible characteristic, nuances, and exceptions of the term, you are unlikely to come up with something meaningful and useful. When you make a statement in everyday conversations, it is generally assumed that the reader will be able to both extrapolate the definition to the meaning that is not originally covered by the definition. Likewise it is also assumed that the reader will also be able to intuitively exclude the exceptions.
When someone says It’s a crime to cut up people, it certainly doesn’t mean he holds the surgeons culpable.
Entrepreneur, in it’s most generally understood meaning, is about starting a business that actually makes money. The definition is specially relevant in the world of technology because it’s abound with businesses that created ‘cool’ products (because they were passionate about it) but failed to monetize it.
Now does that make 'social entrepreneur' a misnomer? Certainly not.
The parent of this comment calls Reddit a time-wasters and contrasts it with online education.
Probably the most valuable online education available today for a sufficiently smart person wanting to become a scientific generalist is provided by Eliezer Yudkowsky. (Since 2001 I for example have learned more science from Eliezer's online writings than from all other sources combined.) The software for Eliezer's latest project, Less Wrong, is . . . Reddit.
(Clarification on what I mean by "education": Eliezer provides education, not credentialing.)
Honestly, I don't think Eliezer Yudkowsky's writings at all compare with what you can get by seriously working through the MIT OpenCourseware site and/or buying textbooks off Amazon.com and working through all the problems in them. Don't confuse feeling smart with being smart.
I freely admit, and sometimes explicitly warn, that I can't compete with doing the problems in textbooks.
But I'll compete with anything short of that; and there are some things today's textbooks don't seem to mention, maybe because it's not formal-sounding enough or universally agreed-upon enough. You can read through a whole physics textbook without understanding MWI; reading about heuristics and biases will leave out a lot that would be helpful in applying it to your everyday life (important exceptions: Robyn Dawes, Cialdini)... but reading standard evolutionary psychology actually will get you all the extras, oddly enough.
nostrademons makes a good point: reading textbooks and working many problems are essential. Still say that Eliezer's writings and the online discussion of them can be a very useful supplement to the textbooks and problem sets.
My business involves education and development. The nice thing about game changing technologies and fast growing industries is that you can have your cake and eat too.
OK, let's say I want to change the world and I decide starting a company is the best way to do that. I guess that means I'm not an entrepreneur, huh?
"But the sooner an entrepreneur and young budding CEOs realise that there really is only one metric that counts in this game, the sooner we will get beyond the recent Web 2.0 silliness and thereby give birth to a revitalised start up environment where some truly amazing, long lasting companies will be created."
To the contrary, the Web 2.0 silliness is a result of people thinking like you. Most Web 2.0 companies (reddit, twitter, youtube) are time-wasters. If entrepreneurs were looking to change the world, they'd be working on something real like online education.