Introducing people to entrepreneurship is a profession in itself. It means addressing people who have not yet decided to start, giving them the desire to, removing cultural and family obstacles, making the path imaginable. It requires patience, a particular kind of teaching, and a tolerance for results that do not appear within the program’s cycle. Some people do it well. I am not one of them.
I confirmed this by teaching for a semester. My conclusion at the end was straightforward: give them their chance and take care of it, but I do not take care of that, I do not know how to do it and it does not interest me.
I design programs for people who have already decided to go.
A useful exclusion
That sentence can read as a closed door. It is in fact a condition of quality, and it protects the program as much as the people entering it.
A program that admits committed people and people still exploring at the same time imposes on both a pace that suits neither. The first group expects progress on their structure, their market, their financing. The second needs time of a different nature, which the program calendar does not allow for. In practice, the support either follows the more advanced group, and the others follow along without gaining much, or it follows the less advanced group, and the first are bored.
In the cohorts I ran, I gave most of my attention to the people who wanted to move forward. I did not block the others, but I did not put in the same effort, and I believe that was the right decision. Someone still in the exploratory phase was unlikely to benefit from that cohort, whereas they could benefit from a later one, once their decision was made.
What this changes for a commissioning institution
An institution funding a program often has two objectives at once: reaching a “convertible” audience and producing a small number of solid companies. Both are legitimate, and they are not pursued with the same program.
When I am asked to design a program, I ask which of the two comes first. If the answer is the former, I recommend giving the work to someone whose profession it is. If the answer is the latter, the conversation can begin.
I would rather lose an assignment in the first conversation than halfway through, once the program has settled on an ambiguity no one was willing to resolve.