Image credit: Morsa Images | Getty Images This story appears in the December 2017 issue of Entrepreneur. Traditionally, you raised money from friends and family, bootstrapped, lost money for one to three years and then you became profitable and got acquired or went public. But because Amazon for its entire life has made no money, and is the fourth most valuable company in the world, that has reshaped entrepreneurship. Now the path looks like this: Raise as much capital as cheaply as possible, and quickly establish a leadership position. There is a race to identify yourself as the leader in every sector. You brag about year-on-year revenue growth, mindshare and leadership position. What this means is that the core competency in building value now is not operations, not data -- it’s storytelling. Two-thirds of the growth is in cities, and two-thirds of that is in New York and San Francisco. To be an entrepreneur, you have to be comfortable with tireless, obnoxious self-promotion. Some people are comfortable with it; some people are not comfortable with it but will do it.
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Traditionally, you raised money from friends and family, bootstrapped, lost money for one to three years and then you became profitable and got acquired or went public. That was the cadence of entrepreneurship. But because Amazon for its entire life has made no money, and is the fourth most valuable company in the world, that has reshaped entrepreneurship. Now the path looks like this: Raise as much capital as cheaply as possible, and quickly establish a leadership position. There is a race to identify yourself as the leader in every sector. You don’t brag about profits….
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