Is it possible to successfully pursue an opportunity that you aren't passionate about?<p>Have you done it? Are there examples out there of people who have done it?
Yes. I wouldn't say we were <i>passionate</i> about Viaweb. We found some of the technical challenges interesting, we liked the idea of helping our users, we wanted to make money, we didn't want to have bosses, and we didn't want to seem like failures to our friends. But we weren't jumping up and down about e-commerce.<p>What I did want passionately was (a) to get enough money to be free to do what I wanted, and (b) not to fail. The latter alone is probably enough of a motivator for most people who would make good founders.
I don't know if I'm successful or not for your definition of successful, but I do know that I don't consider my project much more interesting than toothpaste. The business, on the other hand, I'm passionate about.
Have you ever read 'the millionaire next door'? While it had a slightly different use of entrepreneur than HN - he wasn't in any way talking about high tech - his point was that the typical millionaire ran their own business - and it was usually something boring (eg Dry Cleaning, Construction, etc).<p>It's worth a read.
I think that depends on your definition of successful. If you mean make a lot of money, then yes you can do it without passion.<p>If you mean "waking up with a purpose" successful, then I think passion is a must.