Founder/co-founder as status signalling

This note is more of a ‘leave the points made thus far’ with a cautious reminder of the reality we face today.

The rapid acceptance of entrepreneurship as a career option has been giving rise to another sub-phenomenon. It is not too long ago that entrepreneurs were considered to be people who did not have a job, and therefore took up self-employment. The entrepreneurs of that era had to deal with the lack of support in their families. One could compile an impressive set of tactics these entrepreneurs used to overcome this liability of being the early few in taking the entrepreneurial plunge. While some would not pay heed, others would simply disappear to a friend’s office saying that I am employed there and work on their business in relative seclusion.

Today, media coverage has made the title of ‘entrepreneur’ or ‘founder’ more acceptable and sought after. The craze has gone to such an extent that some individuals put up a stationery store, employ a manager to run the operations of the store, and update their status on LinkedIn saying ‘educational entrepreneur’! To enhance the social recognition, the same individual goes to different investor forum meets, exchanges cards, clicks selfies and puts them on a profile in other social media platforms to keep the reputation bubble going. Before you know it, the same individual would develop some videos, which are often copied in content from other sources, and also claim to be an influencer.

This trend seems to be dangerous at the ecosystem level. Such people create a market filled with lemons and fool the aspiring minds. It is important to realize that using the tags merely as status symbols would not be beneficial in the long run. Maybe somewhere a genuine aspiring mind is not able to convince their parents who have recently gotten to know about a person managing the whole scene this way!

There is no fix to this for now, except being true and brutally honest to yourself.

Ask yourself:

Am I falling prey to the social status trap?

Do I spot others who seem to be spreading this downward spiral? Whom do I work with to build my business?