entrepreneur == someone who makes money by running their own business<p>entrepreneur != someone who invents something revolutionary<p>The vast vast majority of the people in the world will never invent anything new.<p>This is a list of people who found a less-than-common way of making money.<p>This is NOT a list of people with revolutionary ideas.
While I agree that most of the entrepreneurs don't have brilliant ideas, I thought there were two clear standouts:<p>1) The guy that developed carbon nanotube probes for microscopy applications (www.cnprobes.com)<p>2) The guy that hacked away in his basement and created new higher performance heavy duty machine lubricants (www.greasewarehouse.com)
Your post is flawed because it assumes that this is some sort of an authoritative list that took into account <i>all</i> entrepreneurs across America. Untrue.<p>May be you should attack the magazine that created the list instead of the entrepreneurs? Better yet, create your anti-list of guys you think should be there but never will be because they are too busy doing too many important stuff. Simply cherry picking flaws in a bunch of businesses is very easy--even if I agree with many of your assessments about individual ones.
Jesus what a nay-sayer. I wonder if in early 1999 he would have dismissed Google saying, "A website to search the Internet? Why? I can just go directly to what I want!". Sheesh.
He forgot a few:<p>1. A guy who threw daddy's money at the ridiculous idea that people would buy books without seeing or touching them first.<p>2. Two college nerds who thought people would use a TV screen instead of the yellow pages.<p>3. Two more college nerds who thought people would come to their web-site solely for the purpose of going to someone else's website.<p>4. Another college nerd who thought people could be friends without actually being together.<p>5. Some people who thought other people wouldn't mind storing their electronic mail on someone else's computer.<p>6. Some guy pussy-whipped by his girlfriend to trade her beanie babies on the interwebs.<p>7. Some guys who thought people would be willing to send money over the internet.<p>8. A guy who built a place for people to give away their published writings for free.<p>9. A guy who thought people could meet their next SO on the computer in his apartment.<p>10. A guy who thought people could actually communicate something in only 140 characters.
I think you have to distinguish between nay-saying as a stylistic means and arguing with his point.
I think there is a valid philosophical point to be made that young entrepreneurs are not daring enough. Aside from the fact that it's really, really hard not to settle for "easy" execution, society would probably indeed be better off if people dared to go for more daunting tasks.
I guess you can say: If you want to glorify some people - like BW does -, select mostly those who try (and most certainly will fail in doing so) the truly groundbreaking stuff. Those are the ones that society needs to succeed. But it's all philosophical.
Quite a bit of vitriol in there, but it seems it would more appropriately be directed at lousy journalism rather than bemoaning the state of entrepreneurship. While the BusinessWeek article claims to evaluate on "potential for growth," the projected revenue figures sound like PR fluff. I was left wondering which of the 10 were selected just so they have a nice round number for their list.
<i>A service where some woman (who isn’t under 25 or very well dressed herself) plays “queer eye” for a dude over webcam and demeans him into buying her choice of clothes.</i><p>At first I thought this referred to one of those "financial domination" sites where you pay to be humiliated and ignored by some girl over the internet. Now <i>that's</i> entrepreneurship, American style!
"Dear America: you can’t have an economy based on narcissism, good intentions, marketing, catering to rich bored people, really excellent webpages, and selling underpants on the internet."<p>Quite a statement coming from someone working on "problems in quantitative finance." Not sure which adds less value, high frequency trading or (insert any activity on earth here).