Episode 11 - When less is more: The 10% entrepreneur by Patrick McGinnis

Wamda

We’ve all met those entrepreneurs who brag about dropping everything just to follow their dream and start their own business. You need to be fully committed they’d say.

“But what happens when a year or two down the line you fail?” asks investor Patrick McGinnis.

Patrick McGinnis.
Unlike the mentors who preach the all or nothing at all mentality, McGinnis thinks that leaving your office job to build a startup is an uncalculated risk and too much of a burden to handle, specifically because failure in the startup world is not the exception.
For most tech companies which intellectual property or talent is not compelling enough to catch the eye of the Googles, the Facebooks, or the Yahoos of the world, the cold hard reality is death. Some estimates even evaluate the failure at 90 percent of startups.
McGinnis is the founder of Dirigo Advisors investment firm, and is an investor in more than 20 companies including Bluesmart, Nxtp.labs, and Ipsy. His first job forced him to work out of a ‘cubicle’ on Wall Street, an unlikely place for a future startup investor. Eventually, the mundaneness of his job pushed him to explore other horizons across the innovative world.

However, he did not quit his day job simply because it was too risky to lose a sustainable paycheck. Instead, he dedicated only 10 percent of his time, effort and money to his passion.

In 2016 McGinnis published ‘The 10% Entrepreneur’ to explain how building your startup in parallel to your daily job might actually bear better results than full on commitment.

Tune in to the podcast below to hear him speaking in Amman on August 1, during an event organized by Wamda, and hosted by the Abdul Hameed Shoman Foundation Grant Program.