An Entrepreneur Is an Opportunity Taker
Steve Leveen Biography
Co-founder and CEO, Levenger
Steve Leveen - Interview - Levenger
April 22, 2005     1 min. 56 sec.     Leveen19_entrepreneur    
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Transcript
My definition of an entrepreneur, it's funny, when we set out in business, people said, boy, you must be a real risk-taker. Funny, I never thought of myself as a risk-taker. To me, staying as an employee was a risk where I had an entrepreneurial bent and I wanted to strike out on my own. But still, after all these years, I don't think of myself as a risk-taker, I think of myself as an opportunity-taker. And I usually take those opportunities in judicious ways. What I said about direct marketing, test with no more money than is required to make an accurate test and do so as rapidly as possible. I think that applies to business in general, which is one reason I think it's an advantage sometimes to have very little capital when you're starting a business. The bootstrap model. That forces you to be creative and to do things differently. If you have the money you need, as many of the dot com companies illustrated, you will do things the right way, the normal way, the way consultants and experts advise you. And it may well work. Often it does. But the challenge, the difficultly you face in that business model is that other companies are doing things that way. Often these are entrenched competitors with well-run companies, with highly motivated people. Contract that with when you don't have the capital to do it the right way, where you are forced to do things differently and oftentimes you will find ways to do things better, that the big companies won't find because they don't have to, you have to.

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