Definition: A serial entrepreneur is an individual that starts many new businesses in a short period of time. It is a business person that tends to pursue new ideas constantly and work on them simultaneously.
What Does Serial Entrepreneur Mean?
Traditional entrepreneurs are individuals that conceive, plan, organize and execute a given idea and work on it on a day-to-day basis either until the business is properly consolidated or they remain there as senior managers the entire time. Contrary to that, a serial entrepreneur is a person that pursues a business idea but doesn’t dedicate entirely to it for a long period of time, instead of that he designates someone else to oversee most of the day-to-day operations and devotes his time to the next idea. They normally have many ongoing projects in different life stages and it is their purpose to empower someone else to take over and develop the idea.
Serial entrepreneurism has been studied as a business phenomenon and it is a tendency that many are following. Renowned business people like Steve Jobs or Elon Musk are serial entrepreneurs. Nevertheless, there are dangers in being a serial entrepreneur if leadership skills are not good enough to empower others to do the day-to-day work properly, or if there’s no checks and balances system. Also, people with the tendency to be undisciplined or distracted might lose focus and all businesses might end up badly because of a lack of attention in the development stages of each.
Example
Phil is a marketing expert with more than 15 years working for the advertising industry. His in-depth knowledge of how the industry functions have given him great ideas for new businesses. Phil considers himself a entrepreneur and he had already started three businesses.
The first one is a digital marketing agency, that focuses on social media management and content writing.
The second one is a BTL marketing agency that focuses on creative advertising and the third one is a marketing consulting company. Phil is a serial entrepreneur so these will not be the only businesses he will develop, but in order to grow them he hired three experienced individuals to manage each of them and make them grow.
