I rarely think of entrepreneurs as inventors, which is a shift in perception compared to just 20 years ago. I suppose it has something to do with how much innovation today comes from a semi-intangible realm - the realm of software, the internet, and information - compared to the more tangible realm of lightbulbs and bifocals. Edison and Franklin were thought of as inventors first and entrepreneurs second, if they were thought of entrepreneurs at all.

Furthermore, Society’s prototypical inventor is the person who assembled the product that ended up in the hands of customers. No one thinks of the “business” person behind the scenes who established the company, set up the team, raised the capital, etc as an inventor.

Here’s a test for you - Have you ever thought of Sam Walton, Ted Turner, or Mary Kay Ash as inventors? I didn’t think so.

Let’s change our vocabulary for a minute. Look at it this way -

Sam Walton is an inventor. He invented the big retail company.

Ted Turner is an inventor. He invented the modern media company.

Mary Kay Ash is an inventor. She invented a new kind of direct sales company.

Why is changing the language such a big deal? Because we’re more willing to accept failure as part of the inventor’s path to success than we are the entrepreneur’s.

Oh I know everyone talks about how most startups fail and you have to be willing to accept failing over and over again, but there is a huge psychological gap in the subtlety of looking at what you’re building as a new invention vs. a new business.

Edison’s famous quote which by now has become a cliche - “I have not failed, I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” - sums up how we perceive inventors. On the other hand, if Mary Kay Cosmetics hadn’t worked, would we have painted Ash as succeeding in finding one way to sell cosmetics that won’t work?

No. We would have just said she failed.

The reason this mental exercise has become important to me is because Pocket Tales hasn’t progressed as planned. Our actual path hasn’t even resembled Plan B, Plan C, or even Plan D. Additionally, the “failures” aren’t coming from likely places. It’s not that we’ve put a product out into the world and it got rejected. We haven’t gotten that far yet. If we had, it’d be easy to see the parallels between building a lightbulb that “failed” and needing to take it back to the shop and try again, or “iterate.” That type of failure is perfectly understandable and socially acceptable.

No, our “invention” at this point is “how” we’re building the lightbulb. That is my product. That’s how I need to look at it. I need to look at the method of building as an invention itself. In the case of Pocket Tales, that method involves things like:

• How we assemble a team (full-time, part-time, contracted, local, remote, stateside, overseas)
• How we raise money (how many rounds should we plan for, how much runway should each round give us, what types of investors should we raise it from)
• Who should execute which part of the business (should I roughly design the application, should I hire a UX expert and give him/her a lot of freedom)…the list goes on.

I’ve failed repeatedly in this fashion in the last 6 months and it weights on me - or at least it did, until I thought of myself as an inventor.

As an inventor I’m allowed to fail. I’m expected to fail. It’s easy to think that the business side (loosely defined here) of building a company is as simple as following the steps in a textbook because it’s semi-intangible. You rarely get quotes like “I have not failed, I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” when referring to how you build your team, raise money, or structure your marketing.

But anyone who has done it knows it’s not that easy. It’s as complicated as trying to make a lightbulb work and finding ways that don’t work is success as long as you live to die another day.