I've always struggled with the term 'entrepreneur' as it seems anybody can call themselves that, wether they are starting a project, running a franchise, consulting/contracting, whatever.
It always to me seemed like a term with so much arrogance and yet didn't have a concrete enough definition of what it is.
Didn't read the article but I think, yes, everything is entrepreneurship. The only difference is ever the model that you are earning on. Just because you work for someone else on a w-4 doesn't mean you aren't an entrepreneur.
Pursuit of government sponsorship is easier than convincing people to part with their hard earned money by persuasion. A government bureaucrat with a magic bank account called a "departmental budget" filled with other peoples money can be far easier to entice with the latest lame scheme to make the area look good on paper, while adding nothing of genuine utility to the infrastructure.
I agree with the author on this one- it's a waste of money.
But is it "entrepreneurial"?
Yes. Sad, but yes.
My school has recently signed on to one of these programs but through a different company (viaCycle @ Georgia Tech). Basically they're subsidizing their business through students. We already pay for the campus bus system and the school has plenty of bike racks at each building including bike storage rooms and lockers at the dorms. But the alumni who own the company have realized that the school will pay and the SGA will accept it because it makes them look like they're doing something.
Ive taken issue with 'entrepreneur' being associated with anyone that launches a website regardless of what it does AND frankly any business whose sole business model is advertising. I think its reached a saturation point where its just not very interesting anymore. I accept that is a personal opinion and money is money.
I think the more interesting problem is what venues of business are going to create growth vs. which are just going to sap the reserves of the dwindling pool.
To play devil's advocate, I think alternate transportation does need to be subsidized because individual free choice is not always the "best" choice for a society's growth.
I think it comes down to what one considers entrepeneurial. Here at HN, with the crowd heavily skewed as it is towards tech, the adwords seo marketing facebook twitter dashboard mashup is seen as more entrepeneurial than this bike sharing venture - which, arguably, falls under the same class of businesses as, say, property management.
Under this theory, why do we have any government at all? One might argue that the main purpose of government is to provide an aggregate benefit to society that would otherwise not occur due to coordination, efficiency of scale (lack thereof), tragedy of the commons, and other issues.
For example, in this particular case, even if consumers wanted these bikes / bike stations, it might never happen if the company relied on consumer sponsorship. Who's going to pay for such a service when there's only a handful of stations and bikes? But how is the company going to get a ton of bikes / install a bunch of stations without customers? Of course, raising money is one way, but selling to a customer that (in theory) represents the entire population (and has some of their money) is another.
Not saying that in this instance, the government is not incompetent/derelict beyond all belief - all I am is saying is that you can't say a company isn't providing something people want just because they're selling to government. In order to be able to do that, you'd have to first show that the government in question is completely broken in that it never provides things that are beneficial to society, which the author has not (maybe the U.S. government is close, but I doubt many would assert that it is 100% broken).
What you lack is an understanding of the most common use case. I want to ride a bike 3 miles away from my home, but I don't want to worry about finding a place to lock my bike, take the risk of having it stolen, and I don't want to have to retrieve my bike before going home. I've been waiting for this system to migrate to LA since I saw how well it worked in barcelona 4 years ago. I think it's a great concept, and furthermore it would be impossible to implement without government approval because all the docking stations are on sidewalks.
The author is right. Washington DC has an extensive bikeshare system, but over the course of my summer internship it actually made more sense to buy a used bike and sell it back at the end. This is because-
-The bikes are low-quality and heavy, by design
-The time limits and locations are too restrictive (you have to find another docking station, you can't just lock them up anywhere)
-The price point wasn't low enough to beat $170 for a used bike on Craigslist
Maybe I don't fit the use case because bicycles are my primary means of transportation, but I really don't understand who these bikes are for.
Minnesota's new bikeshare program is working quite well over its first year. The bikes are nice, maintained daily, and kiosks are available almost everywhere.
From the article;
"Her goal is not to sell the service to consumers, but rather to the government." And now we change two words;
"Her goal is not to sell the service to consumers, but rather to venture capitalists."
The entire argument is flawed, they are selling to a customer. Does it matter who the customer is?
Why does the government subsidize public transport in large cities?
From the Article;
"In the case of Alta Bicycle Share, my life would be better without its existence." Try swapping "Alta Bicycle Share" with "New York Subway".
I certainly hope Casey Research (the article writer) wasn't subsidized by the oil or car industry to write this piece of garbage.
The point is that a system-wide focus on selling to the government isn't desirable. Likewise, I would think that a system-wide focus on selling to venture capitalists to be similarly undesirable.
The NY subway isn't a good comparison, at all. Most people would still use and pay for the subway, even it were privatized. On the contrary (which is specifically stated in the article) the rent-a-bikes don't seem to be needed by consumers. Whether consumers really want the bikes is unknown, but that isn't the point he's making.
>Most people would still use and pay for the subway, even it were privatized.
Given that nearly all the public transport for large cities is provided at a loss, I wonder if people would pay? History suggests not.
I have no idea if the rent-a-bikes are needed by consumers or not. The article doesn't seem to quote any studies by transport planners or the like. It is written by a company that provides energy/oil information, I wouldn't expect them to write an article about the problems of cars anytime soon.
Bike sharing systems allow you to localize bike storage, removing the need to transport bikes long distances. Instead, transit by bicycle is reduced to middling distances where they have an advantage over both walking and cars.
Second, I don't see how this isn't entrepreneurship. By the author's logic, if I design a workflow system which streamlines compliance measures and so allows a city or state to shift more of their workforce to telecommuting, I'm not an entrepreneur. But clearly, I found a specific problem (regulations that hamper telecommuting) and privately engineered a solution to them; why my customer base is an issue isn't clear.
I'd argue, in fact, that this kind of entrepreneurship may be far more important than others because of the impact government has. The next geosocial app won't produce nearly as much value in the economy as, e.g., the workflow software considered above if only because it reduces government waste.
Amsterdam, famous for bikes, has a nice bike share system. You buy a stolen bike from a crackhead for 10 euro. You ride it around until it gets stolen (maybe a week or two). Then you buy another bike for 10 euro. You never worry about leaving it anywhere because you can always get a new one for cheap. It's like a recycling program!
The argument is that selling something that nobody wants to the government is not entrepreneurship. This, I concur.
However, it was wrong to conflate something which the author couldn't think of anybody wanting with something that nobody wants.
Secondly, the entrepreneur isn't "selling" to the city. The city is getting money for free, i.e. cut of the proceeds without having to come up with capital or operating expenditure.
The lack of car parking spaces in cities is a growing problem and cities are actively trying to solve the problem of public access without having to fund public transport, since hiring public service workers may not be an option. Providing bikes for hire can be seen as one of the measures a city can use to reduce cab traffic.
For me, once I find a car park, I am very reluctant to leave it until work finishes. If I have to go anywhere else say during lunch time, having access to a bike would be extremely handy.
Ignoring the obvious slant to the article (especially funny since the author is questioning a Forbes article) dictionary.com defines an entrepreneur as:
en·tre·pre·neur
[ahn-truh-pruh-nur, -noor; Fr. ahn-truh-pruh-nœr]
1. a person who organizes and manages any enterprise, especially a business, usually with considerable initiative and risk.
2. an employer of productive labor; contractor.
So, if the article really wants to know is Ms. Cohen is an entrepreneur, then I think the answer is yes. Also, how does an article with the phrase "the end is near" in the tagline make it to the front page for so long?
21 comments
[ 1.6 ms ] story [ 51.7 ms ] threadIt always to me seemed like a term with so much arrogance and yet didn't have a concrete enough definition of what it is.
The google definitions http://www.google.ca/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&...
seem to imply the managing of financial risk, but really I think it is a word that has lost it's meaning.
Kind of like "scientist"?
I agree with the author on this one- it's a waste of money. But is it "entrepreneurial"? Yes. Sad, but yes.
I think the more interesting problem is what venues of business are going to create growth vs. which are just going to sap the reserves of the dwindling pool.
To play devil's advocate, I think alternate transportation does need to be subsidized because individual free choice is not always the "best" choice for a society's growth.
For example, in this particular case, even if consumers wanted these bikes / bike stations, it might never happen if the company relied on consumer sponsorship. Who's going to pay for such a service when there's only a handful of stations and bikes? But how is the company going to get a ton of bikes / install a bunch of stations without customers? Of course, raising money is one way, but selling to a customer that (in theory) represents the entire population (and has some of their money) is another.
Not saying that in this instance, the government is not incompetent/derelict beyond all belief - all I am is saying is that you can't say a company isn't providing something people want just because they're selling to government. In order to be able to do that, you'd have to first show that the government in question is completely broken in that it never provides things that are beneficial to society, which the author has not (maybe the U.S. government is close, but I doubt many would assert that it is 100% broken).
What you lack is an understanding of the most common use case. I want to ride a bike 3 miles away from my home, but I don't want to worry about finding a place to lock my bike, take the risk of having it stolen, and I don't want to have to retrieve my bike before going home. I've been waiting for this system to migrate to LA since I saw how well it worked in barcelona 4 years ago. I think it's a great concept, and furthermore it would be impossible to implement without government approval because all the docking stations are on sidewalks.
-The bikes are low-quality and heavy, by design
-The time limits and locations are too restrictive (you have to find another docking station, you can't just lock them up anywhere)
-The price point wasn't low enough to beat $170 for a used bike on Craigslist
Maybe I don't fit the use case because bicycles are my primary means of transportation, but I really don't understand who these bikes are for.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nice_Ride_Minnesota
From the article; "Her goal is not to sell the service to consumers, but rather to the government." And now we change two words; "Her goal is not to sell the service to consumers, but rather to venture capitalists."
The entire argument is flawed, they are selling to a customer. Does it matter who the customer is?
Why does the government subsidize public transport in large cities?
From the Article; "In the case of Alta Bicycle Share, my life would be better without its existence." Try swapping "Alta Bicycle Share" with "New York Subway".
I certainly hope Casey Research (the article writer) wasn't subsidized by the oil or car industry to write this piece of garbage.
The NY subway isn't a good comparison, at all. Most people would still use and pay for the subway, even it were privatized. On the contrary (which is specifically stated in the article) the rent-a-bikes don't seem to be needed by consumers. Whether consumers really want the bikes is unknown, but that isn't the point he's making.
Given that nearly all the public transport for large cities is provided at a loss, I wonder if people would pay? History suggests not.
I have no idea if the rent-a-bikes are needed by consumers or not. The article doesn't seem to quote any studies by transport planners or the like. It is written by a company that provides energy/oil information, I wouldn't expect them to write an article about the problems of cars anytime soon.
Second, I don't see how this isn't entrepreneurship. By the author's logic, if I design a workflow system which streamlines compliance measures and so allows a city or state to shift more of their workforce to telecommuting, I'm not an entrepreneur. But clearly, I found a specific problem (regulations that hamper telecommuting) and privately engineered a solution to them; why my customer base is an issue isn't clear.
I'd argue, in fact, that this kind of entrepreneurship may be far more important than others because of the impact government has. The next geosocial app won't produce nearly as much value in the economy as, e.g., the workflow software considered above if only because it reduces government waste.
However, it was wrong to conflate something which the author couldn't think of anybody wanting with something that nobody wants.
Secondly, the entrepreneur isn't "selling" to the city. The city is getting money for free, i.e. cut of the proceeds without having to come up with capital or operating expenditure.
The lack of car parking spaces in cities is a growing problem and cities are actively trying to solve the problem of public access without having to fund public transport, since hiring public service workers may not be an option. Providing bikes for hire can be seen as one of the measures a city can use to reduce cab traffic.
For me, once I find a car park, I am very reluctant to leave it until work finishes. If I have to go anywhere else say during lunch time, having access to a bike would be extremely handy.
en·tre·pre·neur [ahn-truh-pruh-nur, -noor; Fr. ahn-truh-pruh-nœr] 1. a person who organizes and manages any enterprise, especially a business, usually with considerable initiative and risk. 2. an employer of productive labor; contractor.
So, if the article really wants to know is Ms. Cohen is an entrepreneur, then I think the answer is yes. Also, how does an article with the phrase "the end is near" in the tagline make it to the front page for so long?