back to notes

Why do entrepreneurs get such a bad rap?

26 Aug. 2017, p. 2. I Financial Times pg. 15 | by Janan Ganesh. "

Richard Branson's battle to establish Virgin Atlantic against British Airways in the 1980s was a better story than anything politics has thrown up since (at least until Donald Trump). The work that big tech groups have done to shrink the world is more compelling than any of their localised human foibles. And even the grandest companies tend to go through a journey that should make a screenwriter's eyes widen: the early promise, the brush with disaster, the final vindication stained with regrets.

If the problem is that creative people see business as somehow ignoble, they should not. Business is what first-wave migrants turn to when the natives shut them out of universities and the professions. It is open. Above all, it is hard. My envy of friends who go it alone lasts only until they break down their day into component tasks. I am not cut out for it, owing to what economists generously call a high leisure preference. People who give up a salary for this uncertain toil deserve a fairer shake on screen than another season of gormless apprentices. Even my low trade had Citizen Kane.