Once again EnterQuest have come up with a great angle on business start-up.
Although many business start-ups come from enforced redundancies or a choice to start afresh, the more cautious approach of starting with just a toe in the water is becoming increasingly popular.
I don’t think Chicken Entrepreneur is a particularly flattering name, for what can be the most sensible way to start a business, and one recommended by Jason Fried and David Hansson in Reworking, which I reviewed in A radical Reworking of business.
Chicken entrepreneurship
No, we’re not referring to the number of people taking up KFC franchises, or householders keeping poultry and selling the eggs.
We’re talking about people who start up a business but are too ‘chicken’ to give up their current employment. They’re being entrepreneurial because they have a reasonably firm idea or vision for their little venture, but are afraid to risk everything by going the whole hog and quitting work completely, not for a while anyway.
These are ‘spare-time’ start ups and side-businesses, and are very often second, third or even fourth-income enterprises whose objective is simply to make ends meet and pay the bills.
And there are a heck of a lot of people doing this.