Launchpad Republic

Preface

Entrepreneurship is often a form of rebellion.

Many people think of entrepreneurs as builders, which is certainly true. It takes a Herculean effort to launch a company, and most successful entrepreneurs have a relentless drive to create, sustain, and develop their enterprises. They work continually on growth and planning for the future. They invest extraordinary amounts of time and resources, and they take on great risks.

But underneath this effort, entrepreneurship is frequently an act of dissent, an attack on the status quo, and sometimes even a political manifesto. The attack may be subtle, through an unserved niche in the market or a product idea that incumbents are neglecting, rather than going head‐to‐head with those companies. But the entrepreneur is still challenging the established order.

These two sides to entrepreneurship – the encouragement to build, the empowerment to destroy – show up throughout American history. The colonies began as commercial enterprises, with London‐based investors serving as venture capitalists. Yet many of the early colonists were dissenters, not just religious but also cultural. The U.S. Constitution put in place checks and balances to mediate this ongoing tension through the institutions of government. The result was a persistent tension between a desire for stability and investment on the one hand, and an implicit culture of disruption on the other. From the colonial period through the current day, this balancing act between rewarding ...