Q&A WITH KARL FEILDER

Q

How did you become an entrepreneur?

A

I’m an industrial engineer who then became a software engineer for a long time. Then I went back to school in 2002 and did my MBA, which was a strange experience.

Why was it strange?

The dean actually said, “You’ve sold a bunch of companies and taken them all public, so why the Dickens would you want to do an MBA?” I said it was because I wanted to learn.

What did you want to learn? What I really wanted to learn was why I had been successful? Up to that point, I had been disproportionately successful compared with a normal bunch of people starting out in business, and I didn’t know why.

What did you find out?

My conclusion was that there’s a small portion of the population that are entrepreneurs and most of us have no choice. It took me a while to work out I was an entrepreneur but as soon as you realise this is what you are, physically and psychologically, then you can design your future around that. How does one realise he/she is an entrepreneur?

Many entrepreneurs are working in companies today and are desperately unhappy. They think they can do the job better than their boss, they have creative ideas and these are common things that entrepreneurs run into. However, starting your own business is quite risky and requires a level of commitment and focus and sacrifice that many people who are not entrepreneurs will find very tricky. Entrepreneurs are weird though. They don’t sleep very much, most of us talk very quickly and we think even faster.