Entrepreneurship

Why people do it. As expressed by Raffaele Colella, founder of Cannonball.

Advice for aspiring or new entrepreneurs

I will tell them that whatever they
decide to do, to stick with it for some time,
not to give up, because things are never easy at first.
But if you persist, and you really
strive to bring that concept further, you become better,
you become faster.
You also open up yourself to serendipity
and to chance that sometimes is very important.
There is a Nobel Prize in our school
that often says that, it's better
to be luckier than to be the smartest in the room.
And it's amazing.
And I'm enjoying the journey.
And that's the most important thing.
If you want to make money, you do something else.
You go to Wall Street, or you do certain things.
It can go well, and maybe you can become wealthy.
But in reality you do this, because you're
passionate about trying to find your way of doing things--
of hammering problems, of giving a solution, of doing
something of which is customized.
I have an amazing quality of life in this moment,
even if I'd been bootstrapped for a lot of time,
and I work a countless number of hours,
and thoughts are always on the back of my mind.
But I enjoy it.
And when it's at the moment, I want to go outside to breathe,
I'm not in an office always.
And it's not about being in an office,
because somebody in the company is in the office always.
But I go out to speak with people.
I can be an ambassador of what we are doing.
I feel I-- also how the responsibilities that
are starting to be allocated in the company, that everybody
is putting value for what is best for what he is best at,
the best you can contribute to the team.
So this means that basically I am asked to do,
by my partners, what I am fit for.
And so I'm basically expressing myself.
I've never expressed myself more than in this period of my life,
in my adult life.
I couldn't have asked anything more
to this American experience.
This is amazing.