Get away with social entrepreneurship! Already

Ok, folks blog time, I know, I know you are pissed, I didn’t write for  months and suddenly here am I writing again.. bear with me.. as I don’t really get words or (time) or motivation to jot down what I feel but today I thought like I should write a word or two.

Today I went to a sort of meeting/conference of Entrepreneurs For Nepal (e4nepal). Well, I liked the way people met there, everyone was kind of cozy with other, talking things that actually made sense, dreaming ideas and motivated enough to change their fate along with Nepal’s.

But there was something which really did baffle me for a moment. I had been to a bootcamp organized by same organization e4Nepal about a year ago and the same thing I witnessed there as well.

Today, in the event i was given a book where I had to add my details along with organization or company I was affiliated with, I left the affiliation field blank because currently I am not affiliated with any organization to say officially but I gave a quick glance to other names listed there and organizations they were affiliated with. Sadly, over 90% of the name had listed some sort of NGOs as their affiliation. I mean seriously! Once again, really! An NGO.

NGO, For God sake! You are in a meeting of entrepreneurs and you list your affiliation to a NGO.

By definition, a entrepreneur is meant as:

A person who organizes and operates a business or businesses, taking on financial risk to do so.

What risk are you taking by being affiliated to a NGO.  Yeap, you do deal with tons of moolah that you get as donations but there isn’t risk involved with it. That ain’t your money, neither it is your investors. You get donation, you spend it, if your money makes any changes then good for you but 90% of time I have seen those money don’t create any change. You write a report paying more money to some consultant and say that your NGO has done great work. But there’s no risk involved in it. Sorry to break your heart but you are not a Entrepreneur.  Stop, calling yourself with that name.

There is nothing called Social Entrepreneurs. That’s a vogue term you made up to tell yourself that you are doing something meaningful.  I can sense from far that you are into it just because you can’t take any risk. You fear of failing and fear of being ashamed when you fail.

Entrepreneurship is all about failing and getting up.  If you haven’t failed and haven’t experienced the heat that comes with failure, then you are not an entrepreneur.  Do yourself a favor, stop following the herd mentality that you can’t get a job in Nepal. If you can’t get yourself a job, create the god damned job for yourself. There are gazillions of niches all wide open in Nepal that anyone of you can easily tap. Leverage the technology, bootstrap, eye for ramen profit for the first year of your operation. Do some actual business which actually makes you money. Stop going to NGO, INGOs and stop thinking how you can give back to the community.

First make your position in the community and then think giving back to it.  I even saw some students who still being in their college are affiliated to some sort of NGO. I was highly baffled by that. Aren’t student supposed to be thinking about how they are going to stand up in the society or has our country’s education gone so advanced that it produces student who  directly make their presence felt in society and  as soon as they get out of school they starting giving back to society. I don’t think so.

Take my point you college and school going student, yes you don’t have much option in today’s Nepal but that does not mean you can’t create your own options.

Get over it.  Stop trying to make yourself glamours by joining some NGO. Do some real shit. Make some actual money. Stop thinking about uplifting society and people.  First get yourself up on your feet, make moolah and lastly as Gary Vaynerchuk famously says:

Get off the bitch train.