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Course: Entrepreneurship > Unit 1
Lesson 7: Ben Milne - CEO of DwollaBen Milne - Importance of Curiosity
Ben Milne, CEO of Dwolla, discusses how tinkering and trying to figure out how the world works can lead to being a successful producer rather than just a consumer. Ben also addresses the importance of surrounding yourself with the right people to work on a problem that’s meaningful to you. Created by Kauffman Foundation.
Want to join the conversation?
- So I know that curiosity helps being an entrepreneur what else is there to it?(13 votes)
- passion because you will get tired and without passion and a belief in your business, product etc...you will not be able to persevere when things get tough.(25 votes)
- "what do you want out of life?"
This is a great starting point for creating a happy life.(15 votes)- I want to build a company that creates equality and opportunity for anyone.(2 votes)
- But isn't there a saying curiosity killed the cat?(3 votes)
- Yeah it was made up by boring people. Curiosity is the reason we don't still live in caves and wear animal hides.(3 votes)
- how do you start a buisnes?(2 votes)
- My recommendation is to start the business as a side project. The first years are hard. Really hard. When i started my business I had two employees before i quit my full time job. The first years were still hard and we barely survived. And remember, make no excuses.(4 votes)
- At the end of the day, people are important. Thanks for the advice.(3 votes)
- Thank you for your frank way of speaking about things that inside me. I have recently cut back my FT job to grow my greeting card and magnet business. I lose myself for hours creating the quotes and designs for my stuff. I sell to 7 stores currently and am aiming to be self supporting from that job by April, 2015. I like your idea of asking what do i want out of life and to try something , whether or not it actually ' works'. You are an inspiration. Much appreciated, judy(3 votes)
- what if someone wants to work for some corporation?(2 votes)
- That's ok. You don't have to have your on business. But if you work for a corporation it is important to work like you were the owner. That's the only way to make substantial diference for the world. Some corporation need people with this thinking, because they are inert to the changes that is happening in the world. Than after that, you'll have real experience and maybe have your on business or be the president of the company. Either way, good luck!(2 votes)
- Is he a programmer? I have noticed the most successful entrepreneurs know how to create a program. Is programming an essential skill for an entrepreneur?(2 votes)
- I think it comes down to being curious and solving problems. Programming is all about solving problems and coming up with different kinds of solutions. This however doesn't mean that you have to know programming to be an entrepreneur. There are millions of different companies all over the world, and not all of them focus on tech or programming. :) You can be an entrepreneur in any kind of field.(2 votes)
- Passion because it helps you went you like something and you wanna do it and you wanna make this as your job then do it and work hard.(2 votes)
- What is CF cube?(2 votes)
Video transcript
- My name is Ben Milne, CEO
of a company called Dwolla. When I was a really young kid I guess my grandmother imparted me to reverse engineer things
and take things apart without really knowing that's
what she was teaching me. And so, you know, what I've
kind of realized as an adult, is you can reverse engineer anything. You can take apart a TV or a camera and see what's on the inside. You can hit something with a hammer and see what's on the inside, right? I was raised to believe
that it was okay to try, and very much encouraged to do so. School, for me, was just
like a very difficult thing where I tried very hard, but I was exceptionally mediocre. But I know when I feel like I
want to accomplish something, I can sit down at the computer ask it a buncha questions, I get answers and I can maybe build something cool and maybe show it to other people. The first step for me is knowing that I felt like I didn't
really belong anywhere, but once I found the people
I thought I belonged with, my life got a lot better really fast. Like try to find the smartest
people in the field I can and then just find a
whiteboard and figure it out. That might be strange, but that's the way I'm wired. And for whatever reason, that's me. And once I realized, at
some point in my life, that, like, that was
okay, I started realizing, I started finding myself
around the right people and those people supported
me and acting like who I am. For me, that was a pretty
amazing turning point that I started finding that
if I just said what I thought and allowed myself to get
loud when I got excited, and if something strange came
out of my mouth, just own it, I would find myself around
really brilliant people. It's your choice, every morning, if you can choose every
day to get out of bed and either be a consumer or a producer, be a producer. Produce something that
adds value to the world and just don't sit back and
consume your whole life, just for the sake of
having something to do. Let everybody else do that. Go make something that
you're really proud of. And we all have different personalities that are gonna drive us to gravitate towards different ideas. But if something is
keeping you up at night because either you're angry about it, or you just can't figure it out or you can't stop thinking
about the solution, that might be something
that you might be able to spend five or 10 years
of your life working on. Everybody has ideas. Ideas themselves, are quite worthless and the world is not better because people simply have ideas. Talking about it won't do any good, you have to do something about it. And it might not ever work,
it might not ever happen, but the pursuit of solving a problem that's meaningful to
you, sounds better to me than working in a sea of cubes. I guess I'd rather spend
my life chasing the idea that's in my head. That seems like a good way to live. Just ask yourself, what
do you want outta life? Not, what do you wanna do,
not who do you wanna work for, what do you want outta life? Do you wanna make stuff,
do you wanna paint, do you want to save lives? What do you want to do? And then just concentrate on that and the rest will work itself out.