The Stories That Entrepreneurs Tell

Last year, we looked at ice through an entrepreneurial lens.

Now, after returning to ice, we tell two other unlikely stories.

Entrepreneurs’ Stories

Ice

Arctic ice depends on its story. Saying that Greenland’s ice, having been compressed for close to 100,000 years, is better than the mineral water cubes that now prevail, its harvesters created a market in Dubai’s bars. They also explain that the glacial cubes are pure, melt more slowly, and have no bubbles. Yes, the story has been challenged by a Dartmouth glaciologist who says we cannot be sure of a glacier’s age because new and old snow get mixed. But still, six cubes can elevate the price of an 18-year-old single malt Scotch to 800 dirham ($218).

The life of an Arctic ice cube starts with the pure part of the glacier and a crane lifting a hefty chunk of it to a shipping crate. Then, it sails to the UAE with a stop in Denmark.

This is one of the boats:

Short Term Rentals

During 2008, a company called Airbed & Breakfast, advertised its airbeds to renters looking for a place to sleep. Predictably, skeptical investors said the market was too small. From there, the story flipped to collectible cereals. Still trying to sell the same idea, the airbed entrepreneurs lived on revenue from selling defunct brands’ cereal boxes. At this point, investors said they were impressed by the never-give-up-spirit the cereals reflected. As a result, one group gave them $20,000, another, $600,000, and they became Airbnb. Reaching a tipping point at 700,000 booked nights, they then started to expand beyond an initial 8,000 cities. As one uninterested investor said, “”We focused too much on what they were doing at the time and not enough on what they could do, would do, and did do.”

We could say that they did not listen to the story.

Online Shoes

In 1999, if someone came to you with an online shoe selling idea, you would have said no. After all, don’t we have to try on a shoe in a store? Finally though, they found a believer with this pitch:

“Footwear is a $40 billion industry in the United States, of which catalog sales make up $2 billion. It is likely that e-commerce will continue to grow. And it is likely that people will continue to wear shoes in the foreseeable future.”

The website was called Shoesite.com, but after getting $500 million from the VC firm that liked the story and eventually took over, it became Zappos. Because they weren’t really selling shoes but instead customer service, the idea took off.

Our Bottom Line: Entrepreneurs

Today, more than ice, or rentals, or shoes, we are talking about entrepreneurs.

Different from what we expect, there is more to an entrepreneur than starting a business. As economist Joseph Schumpeter (1883-1950) explained, entrepreneurs are the source of “creative destruction” because their businesses render others obsolete. With their new products and processes, entrepreneurs create jobs, progress, and productivity. They change consumer habits, develop new means of production and new forms of economic organization. Not necessarily concerned with risk, they are unusually focused on making a difference in the world.

At this point, we can debate who truly is an entrepreneur. But the ice, short term rental, and online shoe business do take us to Steve Jobs (reputedly) telling us that, “a lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.”  Similarly, Henry Ford probably said, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”

My sources and more: Reminding me it was time to return to ice, this WSJ  article inspired today’s post. From there, we returned to our past post and then moved to Eater, collectible cereals, and Airbnb here and here. Then, for the Zappos story, IWD and Business Insider had the details.

Please note that several of today’s sentences were in a past econlife post.