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Entrepreneurship is a passion for many, with money not being the primary driving force. After achieving financial success, boredom becomes a significant challenge for entrepreneurs, prompting some to launch new impact-driven initiatives or become investors. The concept of ikigai, where activity is the synthesis of a vocation, a profession, a passion, and a mission, applies well to entrepreneurship, explaining why many entrepreneurs continue despite financial success.
E. Krieger
The average age of innovative business founders is 38 years old, and the median time required to sell a venture funded by venture capital is 9 years, with a median amount close to €30 million to be shared among the founders, investors, and employees holding stock options. Co-founders who come into such fortune are typically around 47 years old.
Some entrepreneurs certainly start earlier and achieve substantial gains more quickly than these median times, but they are exceptions that confirm the rule.
This scenario, heavily focused on startups, only applies to a minority of entities, specifically innovative companies destined for hypergrowth and stratospheric valuations when everything goes well. However, our analysis is equally applicable to traditional companies that grow more slowly but often more securely than these famous high-risk startups for which Darwinian logic is in full swing.
What to do when you can theoretically stop working?
Having supported more than a thousand entrepreneurs for over 30 years, we have encountered many financial successes. Without generalizing specific situations, this allows us to make several observations.
First and foremost, innovation and entrepreneurship are addictive, and those who stop working once they have made their fortune are a minority, especially when the theoretical retirement age is still far off.
This observation corroborates the numerous surveys conducted among business creators, which overwhelmingly indicate that money is not their primary motivator, and the desire for freedom and personal fulfillment takes precedence.
The fear of boredom, this paradoxical driving force
Entrepreneurs who have made significant gains to stop working quickly find themselves facing their worst enemy: boredom. After a few months of rest, sometimes punctuated by a journey around the world, the call of entrepreneurial opportunities becomes more audible to our modern-day Ulysses.
Hence the temptation to launch new initiatives, as the range of activities offered to retirees does not always suit those who thrive primarily through entrepreneurial challenges.
Retiree, Business Angel, or Serial Entrepreneur?
The temptation to return to the forefront generally materializes through two types of activities: creating a new business or investing without an operational role in one or more companies to help other entrepreneurs grow. In the second case, the frustration of not « being in control » often leads to a return to entrepreneurship. Back to square one, therefore, but with a few more years under your belt, still with the same energy and the desire to have an impact on the world.
We have seen this pattern so often at work that when a company is on a trajectory that will allow its founders to be financially secure for one or two generations, we invariably ask the following question to these fortunate individuals: « What will you do next? » Very often, the answer is evasive, both due to the difficulty of projecting themselves into this new life and the concern not to count their chickens before they hatch, go public, or be acquired by a large company.
Ikigai and entrepreneurship
The concept of ikigai applies wonderfully to entrepreneurship when the activity « checks all the boxes » and allows you to combine what you love to do, what you know how to do, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for. This « ikigai » then corresponds to your reason for being, a perfect synthesis of calling, profession, passion, and a unique mission.
The daily life of entrepreneurs often involves ups and downs several times a day. However, a person who thrives in the creation and development of innovative activities without sacrificing friends and family life rarely dreams of « something else. » Their activity, which is by no means seen as a chore, allows them to have an impact, be the master of their destiny, meet inspiring personalities, and, in line with the Schumpeterian paradigm, execute new combinations.
It is not surprising, therefore, that many entrepreneurs who have made a fortune persist in their entrepreneurial vocation, where the journey is evidently more important than the destination.
Once an entrepreneur, always an entrepreneur.
