I disagree. I think a better description is risk tolerant. Pretty much everything in a startup is about risk mitigation e.g. Talking to customers early, building the minimally viable product, hypothesis testing etc.
Entrepreneurs are more tolerant of that risk to begin with and as they prove the market/product, more people have an appetite to get involved, and you can build a business.
If an entrepreneur is really risk seeking then as soon as she's reduced the unknowns, she'll lose interest.
You are right that it is a better term, and I should have used it. I disagree that there is no link between being risk tolerant and risk seeking, though. It would be an interesting study to see if entrepreneurs engaged in high risk sports such as sky diving more frequently than others.
While it might be interesting to do a comparison of extreme sports and entrepreneurship, I don't think we could draw any meaningful conclusions (neither one depends on the other).
You might find the following article interesting, published in Nature in 2008. The researchers compare entrepreneurs with managers (controlling for age etc). It doesn't really make the same distinction I did in my previous comment (re risk tolerant vs seeking) but it's relevant nonetheless. The paper is: Lawrence et al The Innovative Brain (http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/456168a) and slightly off-topic comment Hermann Hauser (http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/456700c)
...this risk-taking performance in the entrepreneurs was accompanied by elevated scores on personality impulsiveness measures and superior cognitive-flexibility performance. We conclude that entrepreneurs and managers do equally well when asked to perform cold decision-making tasks, but differences emerge in the context of risky or emotional decisions.
I'd argue that there weren't so much risk-seeking but the willingness to place bigger bets would indicate risk-tolerance (that's my interpretation, anyway)
If you don't have access to the journal, I've dumped them both in the following pdf. It'll be there for at least the next week but no guarantees beyond that (if you're reading this and it's gone, email me for a copy)
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/486678/InnovativeBrain.pdf
Aside: So sorry to see notify go. I'd probably never have seen this comment if I hadn't got an email about it.
I disagree. I think a better description is risk tolerant. Pretty much everything in a startup is about risk mitigation e.g. Talking to customers early, building the minimally viable product, hypothesis testing etc.
Entrepreneurs are more tolerant of that risk to begin with and as they prove the market/product, more people have an appetite to get involved, and you can build a business.
If an entrepreneur is really risk seeking then as soon as she's reduced the unknowns, she'll lose interest.