Are you a giver entrepreneur or a taker?
I’ve seen a scary behavior among entrepreneurs that they start to compete with each other rather than with their real competitors!
It's like the startups highly demand the rewards and praises they receive from the ecosystem and investors and they compete to get more of that!
As entrepreneurs, I believe we must give back and help the other entrepreneurs, not compete with them, or try to knock them down!
It reminds me of Adam Grant's TED talk.
What do you think about it? Which are you?
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Giver here.
The funny thing is I'm quite confident it's in one's best self-interest to give more than one takes. This applies to human interaction in general, but it especially applies to the world of business and entrepreneurship — a realm in which most people playing the game are meticulously keeping score of whom they can rely on.
You sure are :)
Interesting point of view! I agree with you, but in the past month, I noticed 3 only-takers that scared me!
The truth is, to grow our startup ecosystem, we need to give back. Also, sometimes you see entrepreneurs who give almost only when they can take something in return! Maybe we need to teach ourselves to develop more empathy for the whole startup ecosystem.
I think this is a question of setting boundaries.
I discovered a few years ago that I could break myself out of a depressive mood by offering help to others, asking nothing in return. This is particularly important to someone with insular habits such as myself. It helps me feel useful when my own projects are going badly.
The problem I found was that while most people weren't comfortable being on the receiving end of unconditional altruism, certain people were happy to keep asking for favour after favour.
One day I realised that I had to set boundaries with such people. You have to know where your line is, and you have to let people know if they're overstepping. There will always be somebody takes advantage of your kindness but that's par for the course really. Setting boundaries limits the damage they can do.
Put your own mask on before helping others. Make sure you're on solid enough ground that you can lift others up without compromising your own safety.
Hope that's not too preachy-sounding! 😬
Yeah, I feel what you're saying. Totally agree. After a while, your giving and your favor become your responsibility to some people, which is pretty annoying.
I've noticed it too and its quite scary. But really, I don't think founders really care about competing with other founders out of vanity. Maybe it just looks this way on the outside, but why care about popularity within the founder ecosystem if the product itself isn't doing well?
To answer my own question, I guess some people want to be loved, even if they have to manufacture it and it comes at the expense of their actual business.
But most entrepreneurs aren't this short-sighted. I don't even think most entrepreneurs really talk with one another. Outside of this community and a few others, I get the impression they aren't as interconnected as the internet make might the network appear.
you say entrepreneurs don't really talk with one another. Yes that rings so true I reckon. At the end of the day, all we probably care about is our own startup and how to get signups and wonga.
Maybe deep down we would care about others, but do we have the time to help, when our own startups take 16 hr days!?
Yes, maybe they don't have time to share with other founders. But in that case, founders have to go through many trials and errors themselves.
I think the growth of the startup community leads to the evolution of each startup in it, regardless of their growth stage.
Yeah, maybe it's not purely out of vanity. Being loved is the main driver, but even within your customers, you'd want to be loved.
The thing is sometimes we measure the wrong popularity! Being loved by investors and other founders doesn't mean your customers love you too.
I've tried to learn from other startups' success by asking questions from the founders directly. And it wasn't from big startups. Just the growing ones who've had the experience I'm looking for.
But most of them didn't reply to me at all or in a clear way. I feel like answering a question wouldn't take up that much time. But it seems like some founders don't like to help others unless it brings them popularity or more customers!
yeah, far too much virtue signalling and pure showing-off on here these days.
These "my startup and me are amazing, and I look down on you, so please AMA" posts are becoming quite tedious.
Places like IH should definitely be about giving. And the getting-back-in-return will come automatically. It's why I've turned the founder/investment dating game on it's head, with a new service to help founders get in front of investors for free - similar platforms charge the founder and let invetors go free; what kind of mad logic is that!?
Exactly! When you give, somewhere down the road you'll take! But many don't understand it.
Also, it's pretty cool to give in form of your business so you can take something too. But I believe we need more giver entrepreneurs who don't care about taking back, such as what you've done.
Btw, it sounds cool! I'll check it out! :)
😊
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maybe there's a market for a parody forum or newsletter to poke fun at some of the nonsense in the tech startup world. 😊
I would like to be a giver but I don't think I can give anything helpful back haha. I am probably a taker as I selfishly consume the advice everyone else puts out :(
It’s good to note @Lightkun, That simply encouraging and supporting with positive comments is giving. Everyone has the ability to say something nice and be kind. That is also giving! So nice to see your comment here too.
I believe everyone can give helpful insights to others. Because everyone has experienced challenges that others didn't. The know-it-all entrepreneur doesn't exist in the real world :)
Many times I've asked questions from startup founders who had less MRR or had just started, but I knew they had experienced things I didn't, so I asked them about their experiences.
A taker, and a wannabe giver here. There are several things that stops me from giving.
So this has become a bad loop where I got no confidence in giving leading to ppl not trusting and finding me to give leading to me not willing to give.
Is there any suggestions on how I can improve? Cheers.
I believe everyone has a lot to give to others. It's not a matter of numbers you own! Not a matter of how much money you make or how old you are... You've lived a life nobody else has, and experienced things nobody else has. So you already have a lot to share with the world. You can start with sharing your stories and experiences with friends and/or on social media for example :)
I'm a giver. But here's a question. How much giving is too much giving?
It depends on how you feel about doing it IMO. Giving should feel good.
If it doesn't feel good, you're probably going to end up resenting the person/decision.
I'd like to say giver. But I'm often a taker, if I'm honest.
It's not like I'm sitting here with an evil grin, counting my coins, and trying to take from honest folk. But if I really look at it, and I'm really honest with myself, I think I take more from the world than I give back to it.
Maybe deep down it comes from a fear of not having enough. Like my animal self or my lizard brain is still worried that I won't have enough food to eat or something, so I focuses on getting/taking something now instead of doing what's best for the world, and what's best for me long-term.
Looks like I've got some healing/growing to do! 😅💪
Am I the only one who isn't giving as much as they want?
Really appreciate this share!
I like to give a lot. But do any of us really give more than we take? Maybe some of us do here on IH. But in the world, I'm not so sure.
So I'm right there with ya! Here's to giving more 🚀
The ego plays a major role in a lot of people's actions.
So, you may see that if you play into someone's ego, that person will turn into a giver and if you don't, they suddenly become takers!
It's a hard attribute to notice from a self-perspective because the person will remember numerous times that they "gave" but not the times that they let their ego turn them into takers.
I've seen this ugly pattern many times too, but sadly, a lot of times our ego takes the best out of ourselves from us.
We always should think before talking: Am I talking, or is my ego is the one who's doing the talking?
That's an interesting point as well.
Maybe we can't generalize it. But maybe we can say that the praises received from the startup community can awake the ego and turn people into takers, or takers who give in serious cases where they can take benefit too.
Ideas make us entrepreneurs. So, keep leaning until you achieve your target
I’m a maker.
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Sure. For example, I've tried to learn from other startups' success by asking questions from the founders directly. And it wasn't even from big startups. Just the growing ones who've had the experience I was looking for.
But most of them didn't reply to me at all or in a clear way. I feel like answering a question wouldn't take up that much time. But it seems like some founders don't like to help others unless it brings them popularity or more customers. But if I invited that founder to a webinar with a 20+ audience, they would happily reply to my questions there!
I'm not saying it's bad to sell products while you're helping others. What I'm saying is I'm witnessing fewer entrepreneurs who are willing to give without caring about taking something back in return.
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Yeah, you're right. That pretty much makes more sense to be done in scale.
But at least in the cases I faced, it was from people who knew me, and am sure had the time to answer simple questions. And they most probably didn't receive so many questions, because they weren't a public figure and their startups were in the seed or even pre-seed stage.
This was just an example, but from what I see at least in the European startup ecosystem, we need many more giver entrepreneurs than this.
The idea is, how many giver entrepreneurs do we have really?
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