I had a chance to see plenty of entrepreneurs at close quarters last week at Jenny Morel's Morgo conference and they do have some genuine common traits. They get their buzz from filling a need, ideally appealing to large numbers, and they are generous in their encouragement of other like-minded types operating in different fields from them.
Comvita's CEO, Brett Hewlett talked about the co-founder of the manuka honey specialist, Claude Stratford, a man who would have been NZ's oldest entrepreneur, dying just a few months ago at the age of 102. He started the last of his many businesses in his mid 90s.
WrightSpeed's Ian Wright, a Kiwi based in San Jose, and co-founder of TESLA, is obviously loving life running his own business, figuring out ways to commercialise his electric car technology. With a big grin on his face, he invited the Morgo audience to celebrate with him when his US team sent him a picture of his first product to be sent off to his first truck fleet customer after passing its internal drive tests.
In this week's columns I feature a couple of young entrepreneurs starting out who had a chance to pitch their ideas to the seasoned audience at Morgo and came away sparkling with the experience and a host of new contacts.
Roger Boyd, founder of the jetlag drink, 1Above, who also features this week forwarded me a quote from the Economist: "The difference between a business owner and an entrepreneur is that a business owner wants to open another shop and an entrepreneur wants to transform an industry."
