You believe that no matter what business they are in, entrepreneurs share a similar mindset. Please describe it.

In the book, I lay out the "six R’s" of an entrepreneurial mindset. I titled the book Unstoppable Entrepreneurs because the first R, resilience, is one of the most important components of the mindset. The second element is reason — what is motivating the entrepreneur to move forward with their vision? Third is recombination, which entails each entrepreneur using their unique mix of experiences to identify opportunities. Number four is relationships, which give entrepreneurs access to key resources to move ahead. Fifth is the resources themselves, which include everything from advice to funding and talent. And the last R is results, because of course, you need to focus on your end goals and whether they are being met. These six components are illustrated throughout the book by the real-life entrepreneurs I feature.

What does Shark Tank get wrong about entrepreneurship?

I wouldn’t say they get anything wrong, but Shark Tank really focuses on one approach to entrepreneurship: getting in front of people who have a lot of money and convincing them to invest in your business, which makes you beholden to them in many ways. I would argue that some of the most effective entrepreneurship is not done that way. “Bootstrappers,” for instance, don’t take any sort of equity funding or debt financing for their ventures. So the show covers just one piece of the entrepreneurial pie.

In the book, you present seven distinct paths to entrepreneurship, including the “disruptor,” the “bootstrapper” and the “intrapreneur.” Which category currently contains the most value-creation opportunities?

I think it depends on the individual’s aims, because the different types have different likelihoods of success and different magnitudes of success, as well. For example, disruptors are the media darlings who achieve outsized returns, but they aren’t the only venture in their space. Think about ride-sharing. In the U.S., Uber is the most dominant, Lyft is second and now Waymo is moving up. But there were hundreds of entrants trying to start similar car-sharing services at the start that have fizzled out. For the disruptors, if you win, you can have great success. But in many ways, it’s a bit like winning a lottery.

The Intrapreneurs are somewhat the opposite, in that their entrepreneurship is practised within an established organization as an employee. Waymo was started at Google, so its intrapreneurial employees were working on that project. The value created by intrapreneurs won’t accrue to any one entrepreneur, but rather to the organization supporting the endeavour.

It’s worth noting that the likelihood of success for both Bootstrappers and Acquirers is greater than the others: five years after starting, 80 per cent are still in business, which is much higher than the success rates for disruptors or intrapreneurs. As I mentioned, bootstrappers don’t take on any sort of funding, so they’re literally pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps, using their own funds and profits. Because they are not indebted to particular investors or debtors in ways that put additional pressure on the business, they have the luxury of building the business at a pace that feels right to them.

Acquirers usually buy small, established businesses. A lot of them focus on mom-and-pop businesses like home repair or beauty salons. Two of our alumni started a business that acquired funeral homes. Historically, these are local, family-owned businesses, but when the older generation wants to retire, most of the younger generation doesn’t want to be in that business anymore. So they’ve been able to amalgamate lots of them and scale up very effectively.

Many business schools have built up programs in "Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition" because there are so many opportunities to scale up small businesses due to the sheer number of them in most economies. In the U.S., for example, there are 31 million enterprises; and only one per cent of them employ more than 500 people. Twenty-nine million of them are sole proprietorships!

For disruptors, staying competitive when others try to imitate you requires a “moat.” Please define this term and how it is achieved.

A moat is a feature of a business that protects it from competitors — just like castles in olden days were protected from intruders by moats filled with water. Warren Buffett popularized the term. There are different ways to create a moat: For example, you might have some sort of intellectual property, like a patent, which prohibits anyone else from making the same drug. One of the tech commercializers in my book is developing a therapy for cystic fibrosis, and she’s acquired promising patents that she is commercializing and moving through clinical trials.

Another type of moat is created when it is expensive for someone to switch away from your product and take their business to somebody else. Customers who are bound up in the Apple ecosystem know what that is like. In my book, the featured disruptor is Amy Errett, who founded a hair-colour business called Madison Reed. It’s essentially a unicorn at this point. Amy has created a moat because for 10 years, her team has been collecting data on their customers so that they understand each one’s colour preferences exactly. Women are extremely particular about their hair, and Amy has created a situation where her customers do not want to walk away from her company’s expertise. Another popular type of moat can be economies of scale. For companies that have grown large and are providing service to lots of people, the per-unit costs are smaller, and therefore they can compete on price.

Seventy per cent of transformative innovations have been developed within established organizations. How does an employee make the switch to being an intrapreneur?

Some of the bigger, well-resourced companies invite this sort of activity. They will stand up something like an office of innovation, where entrepreneurial employees can try out new ideas. Rather than it being a profit-and-loss centre, it’s a cost centre, where resources are devoted to experimentation with new ideas for products and services. We hear a lot about Google and its 20 per cent time initiative, where employees can spend some of their time each week working on a chosen project. Actually, 3M had 15 per cent time many years ago, so this is a direct descendant of that. Well-resourced companies can afford to do this and provide other opportunities like sabbaticals. Other companies might run hackathons or other sorts of competitions or tournaments, to give people a chance to innovate, come up with new ideas and win different sorts of prizes.

If Intrapreneurship is something that anyone is interested in exploring in their organization, I’d advise taking a look at the structure of the organization and seeing what already exists. Then, if you see a new problem that you believe your organization could solve, start talking about it and bring the idea to your superiors to ask where you can go with it. Sometimes the company will be able to support you, and sometimes they won’t.

Also, sometimes people have ideas that are too small for an established organization — but could turn into something great if the individual leaves and becomes an entrepreneur. This happens frequently in consumer packaged goods, where many of the cool new brands that are being developed in startups are acquired by the big CPG firms after they’ve gotten traction. Often, these start-ups have been founded by their former employees.

What are the main things that hold people back from taking the entrepreneurial plunge?

When I talk to groups, I usually start off asking for a show of hands. First, I’ll ask, “How many people here are entrepreneurs?” and a few people will raise their hands. Then I ask, “How many of you consider yourselves entrepreneurial?” More people raise their hands. But then I ask, “How many of you want to be more entrepreneurial?”— and almost everyone raises their hand.

What I suggest to people is this: Look around for problems that exist in any of the spheres you run in, whether at work, in your home and family life or in your community. Wherever you are, you’re going to see pain points. Start to think about possible solutions. Get some ideation going on that front.

Also, think about the experiences you’ve had that are somewhat unique compared to other people. Maybe you’re the person in your company who rotated between four different jobs rather than staying in the same role. As a result, you have a different vantage point. You notice more unique things. Or maybe you grew up in another country and then moved and transported your knowledge of that culture to a new one. That can also be a great source of inspiration.

My key point is, just get started. Entrepreneurship is about being resilient. There are lots of learning experiences, and you will get plenty of negative feedback. You may have an idea that you think is fabulous and other people don’t. There are lots of incubator and accelerator programs in all the major cities where people can take workshops and try out their ideas and get feedback. If you start getting out there and asking, "Why don’t you like this?" and "What would it take for you to buy it?," you’re going to learn. And then you can take your idea to the next stage.

The way I define entrepreneurship is very simple: value creation through innovation. I really want to move us beyond the stereotype of the "tech-bro" disruptor who has dropped out of college and built a unicorn. There are many, many ways to create value today.

This article originally appeared in the fall 2025 issue of the Rotman Management magazine. If you enjoyed this article, consider subscribing to the magazine or to the Rotman Insights Hub bi-weekly newsletter.