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Published April 27, 2017 by Bill Keck.
The future is rushing at us at incredible speed. Industries are being disrupted. The world is transforming itself at a pace never experienced before in history.
Entrepreneur Patrick Betdavid has said that entrepreneurs can solve 100% of the world’s problems. If that’s true, and I think it may well be, then the vast majority of those entrepreneurs are going to be programmers.
The reason why I say this is pretty simple, which will hopefully be clear in a minute.
I watched Betdavid step through a simple list on how to become an entrepreneur:
- Build a team with complementary talents.
- Identify the industry you are interested in.
- Identify problems within that industry that need solving.
- Determine which companies are already trying to solve those problems.
- Determine whether or not the companies trying to solve the problems are weak or strong.
- If you determine that the company that is trying to solve the problem is weak, then you may have identified an opportunity.
The way to solve problems and beat the competition is through innovation. Who better to lead that innovation than programmers?
So that’s really good news for programmers. We have almost unlimited opportunities in front of us.
However, as I state in my book, 100 Patterns For Success, I don’t think finding opportunity is as simple as just running through Betdavid’s list.
I can easily identify opportunities. I think Bitcoin, for example, is ripe for disruption.
For one thing, their technology is not being updated and it won’t be able to keep pace with the evolution of devices. This is a weakness.
While there are more and more centralized cryptocurrencies coming on the market, which address part of that concern, none of them are particularly strong.
So does that mean I’m the right guy to come up with the solution? No. I don’t have a passion for it. The idea of working with cryptocurrency doesn’t excite me as a programmer.
People who are not passionate about what they are doing, but are simply chasing an opportunity, are almost 100% guaranteed to fail. Inevitably there will be difficulties that will chase most of them out of the industry, and sooner, rather than later.
On the other hand, if you are kept up at night by thinking about all the possibilities of a cryptocurrency and how cool it would be to code it, you would at least have a chance of making it.
As an entrepreneur, the odds are always stacked against you. The failure rate is insane and deciding to be an entrepreneur is not a rational act because almost any objective analysis of whether or not you will be successful almost always points to the negative.
Those who go on in the face of hopelessness are born to be entrepreneurs. But this is easy for them because they don’t think of it that way.
Entrepreneurism is an act of self-expression. We do it not because we want to, but because we have to. Often, we have no other employment options because we simply don’t fit in anywhere.
Most entrepreneurs fail due to lack of capital. The interesting thing about programmers is that we trade in a different kind of currency, code. And that code can be incredibly valuable, even though it doesn’t take a lot of capital to write it.
I got involved with writing educational books about 4 years ago, introducing programmers to PHP frameworks. My most recent programming book is Laravel 5.4 For Beginners, which is rated 5 stars on GoodReads.com, so thanks to everyone who rated it.
I wrote the 100 Patterns For Success to help programmers understand how they can use the incredible talent that they have to drive towards greater success in life.
So to get back to Betdavid’s assertion that entrepreneurs will solve 100% of the world’s problems, and if you accept my proposition that those entrepreneurs will be programmers, then that’s both an awesome responsibility and a great privilege. Part of my mission is to help you make the most of it.
Thanks again to everyone for supporting my work. Ratings, reviews, shares, likes, and comments are greatly appreciated.
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