I have spent this week getting ready for a course I am planning to teach in Innsbruck, Austria, at the MCI MANAGEMENT CENTER INNSBRUCK. The topic is “Leadership in an Entrepreneurial Setting.”

I started by asking myself the question, why is leadership any different for entrepreneurs?  Many corporate leaders navigate uncertain times and take their teams into settings involving risk, so is the entrepreneur so different?

After working on projects with large companies, I have to say that leadership in a startup context is quite different.  What I have observed is that in the case of big companies we work with, when problems arise, the leaders apply time and/or money.  Have to deal with a technology issue?  No problem – we’ll call our IT department.  Negotiating a contract? That will go to “legal.”  Expanding the scope of the project?  We’ll just pull a few more people from other projects onto our team.

In startups, leaders have to solve problems in a very different way, because you typically:

1. Have very little cash.
2. Have a lot of time pressure.

When you have no money, everyone on the team has to wear a lot of hats.  And most of them don’t fit very well.  For example, the startup management team (typically 2-3 people, perhaps not all fulltime) has to:

1. Create a vision and mission.
2. Make strategic decisions, operational decisions, tactical decisions.
3. Create a brand and a marketing and PR campaign.
4. Attend trade shows.
5. Do social networking to get visibility Raise money from investors.
6. Work with attorneys on business, including contracts, funding documents, non-disclosures, employment agreements,
7. Write grants.
8. Deliver against the grant.
9. Develop the product/service, including manufacturing, quality control
10. Develop relationships in the supply chain.
11. Put up a website and manage any IT aspects of the business.
12. Manage part time staff.
13. Monitor financial aspects of the business.
14. Build and manage the Advisory Board.
15. Create a supportive network to battle the isolation factor.
16. Sell!!!

So part 1 of my answer to why it is hard to lead in an entrepreneurial context:  An entrepreneurial leader is almost always doing something that is out of his/her comfort zone. As Sandeep Kumar mentions, it is “intellectually stimulating and yet exhausting…… financially …..but  worth every moment!

One more item:  I asked another talented entrepreneur if she thought the above list was complete.  She said I should add: figure out how to maintain work life balance or add “divorce documents” on to the list of things to discuss with the attorney!

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