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Entrepreneur

Entrepreneur

  • Term

    Main definition

  • Entrepreneur

    In the mid 1850's, the word entrepreneur was borrowed from the French word entrepreneur which means "one who undertakes or manages," and the word originated in the 1500's with the Old French word entreprendre which meant to "undertake".

    Entrepreneur is synonymous with an undertaker of projects, but the word “undertaker” (someone who undertakes a task) has been a euphemism for “funeral-undertaker” since the late 17th century, so entrepreneurs in England and the United States have adopted entrepreneur in its original French. 

    The entrepreneur actually undertakes something quite special--a business in the entrepreneur's imagination before one exists really, and this can make an entrepreneur great, or sometimes tragic. Quixotic though it may be, entrepreneur is a complimentary label that describes many persons who established a successful business or founded a great company, but living the life of an entrepreneur is hard. The entrepreneur is exercising freedom of choice to decide to start a business and does not ask for sympathy, but starting a business with limited resources in America or anywhere is difficult. There are 168 hours per week, and working at least 84 hours is a typical work-week for an entrepreneur. But if it were easy, then maybe every entrepreneur would succeed. Remember that the term entrepreneur applies not only to Mark Zuckerberg but also to nearly 500 million active entrepreneurs around the world.

    An entrepreneur's business starts on paper. An entrepreneur organizes a business on paper, plans on paper, assembles a team on paper, and then draws a business plan on paper, in order to ask people to invest cash.

    Entrepreneurs are not shy to ask for an investment. Tenaciously entrepreneurs will talk about their business anytime, even during an elevator ride. The 15-second script they save for those opportunities is named the "elevator pitch".

    The plural form of entrepreneur is entrepreneurs. The adjective form of entrepreneur is entrepreneurial. The adverb form of entrepreneur is entrepreneurially.

    Used in a sentence, "The entrepreneur asked me to invest in his new company." The other forms of the word entrepreneur are entrepreneurialism and entrepreneurialistic, but these are used exclusively by scholars and pundits who have time for eight-syllable words. 

    Synonyms: entrepreneurs

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