The Role of The Star Principle Entrepreneur

If you've ever started or run a business you know that your days can be as hectic as you want to make them. You can get caught in the trivial minutiae related to the day to day running of the business while thinking that you are being productive. But that is not how Star Principle entrepreneurs perform.

So what is the primary job of the star principle entrepreneur?

The star principle entrepreneur's role is primarily to search, consult with domain experts and conduct thought experiments. Search for what? Search for that one single stroke of insight, one single product or service differentiation, one single partnership or relationship, one single employee or contract help that will help catapult the business into the next level. With a bit of luck you will need to get only one or two breakthrough's and you will have succeeded. The rest is just the finishing touches and best left delegated to competent, motivated, well-trained experts.

Unfortunately, the creative insight or the ability to identify a great idea does not happen in isolation. It happens in the thick of battle ... in the middle of the marketplace. So it's important for the Star Principle entrepreneur to be involved in the right kind of minutiae.

So what is the right kind of minutiae?

Anything that contributes to the differentiation of your product or service (note: I said differentiates, not improves; there is a big difference between improving the product or service at a hygiene level versus making it different from anything else out there; while this distinction is blurry, it is important to bear in mind that "while the devil is in the details, the devil's boss is in the differentiation") In other words, try and hire competent experts to take care of the "hygiene issues" (the hidden issues that are taken for granted and are not noticed until they are absent.) And you focus your time on figuring out how to make your business or service more and more different.

It's also important for the Star Principle entrepreneur to consider a variety of initiatives (hiring new people, implementing a new technology, adding a new differentiating feature etc.) But more importantly, it is the star principle entrepreneur's role to say no to 99.99% of these potential initiatives. "The Law of Singularity" (from The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing) states that "in each situation, only one move will produce substantial results."


The folks at 37 Signals narrate an incident about Steve Jobs in their free, online book - Getting Real ...

"Steve Jobs gave a small private presentation about the iTunes Music Store to some independent record label people. My favorite line of the day was when people kept raising their hand saying, "Does it do [x]?", "Do you plan to add [y]?". Finally Jobs said, "Wait wait — put your hands down. Listen: I know you have a thousand ideas for all the cool features iTunes could have. So do we. But we don't want a thousand features. That would be ugly. Innovation is not about saying yes to everything. It's about saying NO to all but the most crucial features.""

So your role (should you decide to become a star principle entrepreneur) is to say no to the thousands of potential moves that you can make and choose the one move in a particular situation that will help change your fortunes. Saying "no" blindly is not the same as saying no after rigorous research and thought experiments. So you should be spending your time on two things:

1. Generating ideas for potential moves that can help explode the success of your business.
2. Finding reasons for saying no to 99.99% of those ideas so that only one or two of those ideas stand-out as slam-dunks and so that there is enough of your resources to help nurture those ideas.