Being an entrepreneur is more than a matter of simply starting a business.
I wish I'd known more about how to build a startup when I was younger.
After opening my first restaurant in 1969, one of the regular customers suggested I write a cookbook, so I did. Then another. After my 12th one, I started to feel stale.
Startup stories are always smoother in the telling than they are in reality. A startup is not one, but a series of 'Aha!' moments, and some which seem like 'Aha!' moments but turn out not to be.
Every successful businessman will have experienced set-backs and failures - they're lying if they say they haven't. Virgin has had some tremendously successful businesses and some that have not quite worked out. Virgin Cola springs to mind - the product wasn't distinct enough from Coca-Cola.
Being an entrepreneur is hard. Having supportive and caring investors helps.
From a personal standpoint, I consider myself much more of an accidental entrepreneur. I was involved in the entrepreneurship club at Harvard, but I heard of it only because it was new on campus.
There's so many ups and downs, and there's so many pieces to trying to build a business, and if the intention isn't very, very clear and the business isn't reflecting that intention, then it makes it much harder.
The journey from employee to entrepreneur was a complex and taxing one for an immigrant like me.
