Today I continue my conversation with Alex Rawitz, entrepreneur and co-founder of Verbatm. For part 1, please click here.
The Verbatm Team (left to right): Aishwarya Vardhana, Iain Usiri, Sierra Kaplan-Nelson, and Alex Rawitz
How would you describe today’s entrepreneur archetype?
There is this vision of the entrepreneur as somebody who just comes in and makes money. They aren’t necessarily interested in the moral ramifications of what he or she is investing in, but that’s never been the type of entrepreneurs we want to be. We’ve had discussions of not just the type of company we want to be, but also who we want to be.
An entrepreneur is somebody who supports causes that are important to their sense of society and what’s necessary in the world. I think anything we do has to have that kind of social good guiding it.
There’s maybe a Hollywood conception of the entrepreneur as morally questionable or brash. They’re have been some people I’ve met who are doing stuff in Silicon Valley who fancy themselves that way. We’d be lying if we said, “There’s no selfish motive whatsoever. We don’t want a particular kind of lifestyle.” But it’s always with that social good in mind.
What does it take to be an entrepreneur?
I think there are a few traits that are helpful for being an entrepreneur, but they are not exclusive to just entrepreneurship.
You have to be constantly trying things, experimenting, being scrappy. You have to not be afraid of failure and learn and build on your failure. In some respects, you do have to be daring, but I wouldn’t say that is any more daring than somebody who works a job where they are not their own boss. I don’t think there is a quality there that is lost.
Frankly, a lot of the times you have to have the infrastructure around you to be able to do that. It’s kind of a reckless thing to do in a lot of respects.
How do your parents feel about you being 21 and starting a company?
They’re proud, definitely, but they have conversations with people like, “Oh yeah, he’s taking time off from school to build his own company and do this cool program in San Francisco.”
And everybody’s like, “Oh that’s so great, you must be so thrilled,” and my parents are like, “Well, we’d rather him just go back to school.”
I tell them, “Geez, it’s not like I’m going to rehab! I’m still on a relatively upward trajectory.”
At the end of the day, they’re not displeased or unhappy. They’ve never forbidden me from doing any of this, with the promise to graduate. Which I was totally on board with, I think it would be silly not to have the degree after putting in the work for it.
But they see I’m happy, and they see that I’m productive and working on something. It’s an interesting chapter of my life, and they are curious to see what happens next.
Do you have any advice for millennials who want to pursue the entrepreneurial track?
I think it would be pretty presumptuous for me to give advice! Without knowing their situation or how good of a start-up idea it is, I’m not going to tell them, “Yeah kids, drop out of school!” But my one piece of advice is this: think about your motives. Why are you doing this thing?
Also, be prepared to sacrifice a lot of work and sanity on this project.
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If you are interested in beta testing Verbatm, feel free to email Alex at alex[at]myverbatm[dot]com.
The post An Interview with Alex Rawitz, Co-Founder of Verbatm – Part 2 by Declan Wilson appeared first on A Millennial Type.