The following is an excerpt from Dare Disturb the Universe.

“How do you know who is an entrepreneur? It takes time. You meet his family, you visit his home, and you try every way to get inside his head. The technology entrepreneur must be thoroughly grounded in the science of his area of innovation.

The real entrepreneur is totally obsessed with his mission. He must believe that nothing can stop him—all risks he will overcome. If you finance him, you become part of his vision. Until a company is successful, you will not be able to sell your investment at a profit, so your destiny is inseparably tied to the company that is being created. The original business plan is nothing but that, an idea: dodge left, dodge right, find success. The entrepreneur must succeed even if the world falls apart around him. The only thing that counts is our success.

“You go on sales calls with the entrepreneur, have dinner with him, you understand how he solves problems. Take for granted that the entrepreneur is hard working. Judge him by the people who he attracts to his company, for he must not be afraid to hire people better than himself. The entrepreneur, a driven man, is usually motivated by money. He wants the access to the intoxicants of life: art, houses, sports, gardens. But money is only one tiny element of the equation. The true entrepreneur must be in love with his product. It sounds odd to love a microwave radio. What I mean is that the entrepreneur must lose a piece of himself to that which he creates. Is this not what the painter or the poet do? The company is a part of its creator. The act of creation becomes its own intoxicating reward, and to not create unleashes dark moods which often lead to depression. It’s the same for Henry Ford. He returns from a vacation and inspects his manufacturing line. He finds that some overzealous vice president, in his absence, has painted one of his beautiful black cars a dark blue. He grabs a sledgehammer and maniacally destroys the car in front of him in an hour of frantic violence—it is as if someone has violated his soul. Can you imagine that painting a car blue could be a violation of the soul to any other man than Ford? But to understand why Ford has no choice but to grab that hammer is to understand the creative passion of an entrepreneur.

“Unfortunately, in the business, your life will be spent dealing with serious problems, often crisis, and sometimes situations of life and death. Because you find yourself sharing a vision, you will naturally be drawn to save it at all costs. Two bad deals may absorb you, and you may spend only a little time with the company that ends up making your investors one half billion dollars. Entrepreneurs never admit defeat nor do good venture capitalists. Nil desperandum. You must never lose the courage to dream on a grand scale. You must hold on to that dream at any price, any sacrifice. The most important quality besides honesty is optimism. Many of your dreams will die, but there will always be a dream that becomes tomorrow.”