The New Builders

CHAPTER SIXA Brief History of Entrepreneurship in the United States

In 1775, Daniel Boone led a small expedition through the Cumberland Gap in the Alleghenies, entering what would eventually become Kentucky. We think of him as an explorer, but he was also an entrepreneur. He worked for a business venture called the Transylvania Company that anticipated westward expansion and was trying to figure out how to make money from it. Most Americans at the time were farmers – or wanted to be – and as such, land was wealth. Discovering and colonizing new land, even when it meant taking the land from indigenous people, killing them in the process, was big business.

In fact, almost every early American figure was at least part entrepreneur. All of them have complicated stories. We think of George Washington as “the father of America,” and in the next breath remember that his legacy is stained by his ownership of enslaved people. While Washington's political prowess and military ingenuity was what won America its independence, it may have been his entrepreneurial acumen that enabled the fledgling United States to survive the initial years after British rule (and, in particular, allowed the country to pay off its massive war debt). He was, among other things, an innovative farmer (he was the first person to breed horses with donkeys) and the owner of a large whiskey distillery.ⁱ That there are also troubling aspects to the lives of the men recognized as the founders of the country speaks ...