Is Entrepreneurship In A Bubble?
By Amine Rahal, entrepreneur and writer. Amine is the CEO of IronMonk, a digital marketing agency specializing in SEO and CMO at Regal Assets, an IRA company. getty  These days, there are a lot of side-hustlers, gurus and self-appointed CEOs out there. You don't have to look any further than the glut of expert gurus on Amazon or YouTube trying to sell you their course or their e-book to become the next great seven-figure business owner. In the Covid-19 era, you could argue that we're seeing a variety of speculative asset bubbles, such as in the stock market, real estate market and cryptocurrencies  in fact, 62% of affluent investors believe we're in an equities bubble. To my mind, a bubble forms whenever market values are overhyped due to public perception. I've started to suspect that that's exactly what's going on in entrepreneurship. If people flock into the profession for the wrong reasons, such as fame or prestige, then we're sure to see a spike in Chapter 7 or 13 bankruptcies in the near future. In this article, I'll further explore the existence of an entrepreneurship bubble. The Rise Of Speculative Entrepreneurship  It's true that 70% of small businesses fail within 10 years. Although it's a tough pill to swallow for some, there does seem to be an innovation deficit. In my opinion, there's a shortage of people doing original, bold and creative things in the market. The rise of no-code app-building software has led to incredible success stories. In a recent case, an entrepreneur with no coding knowledge launched a small business gift card app on March 15, 2020, and sold it to USA Today within a week! The trend of bootstrapping quick apps and software solutions probably isn't going to go away. According to Gartner, Inc., by 2024, no-code app development may account for 65% of all activity in the app dev market. I think this has big implications for the future of entrepreneurship. We've already seen a meteoric rise in the number of people who brand themselves entrepreneurs, and I suspect that no-code development platforms are only going to catalyze the trend. This isn't a bad thing in and of itself, but it might set the wrong precedent. If anyone can become an entrepreneur, and movies and media make entrepreneurship seem easy and glamorous, we might see a lot of startups fail simply because they started out for the wrong reasons. We shouldn't go into business to serve ourselves. Call me old-school but, for me, it's always the customer first. If we go into entrepreneurship because we're speculating about a wealthier, more prestigious future self, then we're violating the customer-first principle. Not A Bubble, But A Lack Of Innovation  As a digital entrepreneur myself, I realize that maybe I'm biased on the topic. So, I reached out for a second opinion from a variety of entrepreneurs and executives in my network to see what they think. After getting outside opinions and reflecting on the topic a little further, it seems that there isn't an entrepreneurship bubble as much as there's an apparent influx of hopeful entrepreneurs and small-time business owners who've yet to sell beyond their close friends or family. The startup community isn't a bubble in itself. Rather, I think the profession of entrepreneurship has been romanticized in the media and online. We should encourage the entrepreneurial spirit, but not glamorize it to the point that everybody and their grandmother wants to be an entrepreneur. There simply isn't enough supply of ingenuity and creativity to accommodate that. Not everyone can be a Gates or a Zuckerburg, but that's okay. Entrepreneurship is not always glamorous and shouldn't be pursued for prestige or status. To preserve the integrity of entrepreneurship, we should focus on providing the best product or service to customers. As entrepreneurs, we always have to remember that  otherwise, we run the risk of doing business only to serve ourselves.