Robert Scoble probably said it best when it comes to entrepreneurs. He said they have to be crazy because entrepreneurism is "like jumping off a cliff and building a parachute on the way down and assuming that you're going to figure it out while you're falling."
So when we came across this video about founders at the recent South by Southwest meetup, we immediately saw what Robert was getting at. Take a look and notice how entrepreneurs really stand out from the rest of us folks:
Sure, the video is a bit tongue-in-cheek, but it's a great illustration of what Robert was getting at. Entrepreneurs have to stand apart from the crowd, thinking that anything and everything is possible. Or as Verge reporter Nilay Patel puts it in the video:
They believe that they stand apart. That they are capable of building anything. The barriers to build anything now is zero.
Despite that there are still a few hopeful entrepreneurs who cling to imitation. That their startup is like X but for Y. Case in point was the young man in the video who said his startup was:
Yelp for underdeveloped countries.
We've seen many entrepreneurs get in the game only to want to imitate another successful product, such as Facebook. But, as we've said before, imitation is suicide. Imitation is a barrier that entrepreneurs build for themselves. They have to look to innovate, not imitate. Like what Steve Jobs did with the Xerox mouse and personal computer. He didn't imitate it, he improved it. That's innovation, not imitation.
Yes, there are no longer any barriers to building great products. The only barriers young entrepreneurs face nowadays are the limitations they impose on themselves.