Report by KAufmann Foundation Anatomy of an Entrepreneur

The very definition of an entrepreneur is for many someone who simply goes their own way, and define their own path to success.

And no venture, and no entrepreneur, is precisely like the other. But why do some make it and others, in spite of the best of intentions, do not?

I came across the 2009 report “The Anatomy of an Entrepreneur” by the Kaufmann Foundation, based on a survey of 549 company founders across a variety of industries. The study seeks insights into high-growth founders’ motivations and their socio-economic, educational, and familial backgrounds. Key findings are sum up what successful entrepreneurs seem to have in common, in terms of background, level of education and motivation.

As an entrepreneur in the starting blocks of scaling up my business, I was of course curious to see if I fitted the picture and have what it takes.….

So here goes:

The average and median age of company founders when they started their current companies was 40.

Tick! OK, I was 35. Not too far off the mark.

95.1 percent of respondents themselves had earned bachelor’s degrees, and 47 percent had more advanced degrees.

Tick! With a Bachelor’s and a Master’s Degree under my belt, I fall in the latter category.

52 percent said they ranked among the top 10 percent in High School.

Yes Sir. I did. Can’t deny I was one of those bookworms with the glasses. Quite surprising finding though, I had the stereotype idea of the free-thinking entrepreneur that went so much against authority when growing up, that his or her talent wasn’t seen in school.

Less than 1 percent came from extremely rich or extremely poor backgrounds.

Tick! I certainly lacked nothing when growing up, and got the chance to travel, study, play and sport. But extremely rich: no. Extremely poor: luckily for me, no. 

15.2% of founders had a sibling that previously started a business.

Tick! My  brother has a rent-a-doctor business, Addoc, that he started a few years’ earlier than I took the plunge. For him, it is a sidejob next to his ‘day job’ as a surgeon, but nevertheless, his ambition and guts certainly inspired me.

69.9 percent of respondents indicated they were married when they launched their first business.

Tick again. Yes, I was married and I can’t stress enough that without the support — and salary, let’s be honest — of my husband Han ten Broeke, I would never have been able to even think about quitting my job to starting develop a product full time. And those times when things seem to not go my way no matter how hard I try, he is the one who inspires me to take that extra step. Again, again and again.

59.7 percent of respondents indicated they had at least one child when they launched their first business, and 43.5 percent had two or more children.

This certainly challenges the stereotype of the entrepreneurial workaholic with no time for a family.

As far as I am concerned: Tick again. Stronger: without my daughter, there would never have been a business idea. Thus — no business.
Having a child also made me long for more flexibility in my professional life. Having a business does not mean working fewer hours, for sure, but I can much more easily combine this workload with family.

The majority of the entrepreneurs in the sample were serial entrepreneurs. The average number of businesses launched by respondents was approximately 2.3.

Nope, here I don’t fit in. With a past as a diplomat, I was about as far from an entrepreneur one could come, I guess, when I started this venture. Let’s hope this is not an indication that I have 2.3 businesses to go before I may count myself successful.….!

74.8 percent indicated desire to build wealth as an important motivation in becoming an entrepreneur.

Oups. Tough one. Hand on my heart, I found it so difficult — in the beginning — to admit that yes.… I WANT TO MAKE MONEY! Why? After 10 years in development aid, it was very hard to wear the hat of someone who thinks in terms of profit. It’s simply a bit of a dirty characteristic in my old circles. Also, MummyMug of course has a higher benefit than being a money maker: I sincerely do it also for the kids that will be saved the pain of scalding burns, if their parents are smart enough to use my invention.  but this said, and certainly since I have investors on board, and since I realize how enormously hard it is to make that profit: yes, I want to make money. And yes, if I do: I will have deserved it!

Only 4.5 percent said the inability to find traditional employment was an important factor in starting a business.

Tick tick. I left my lifetime safe employment at the European Commission for my dream.No lack of employment in the past thus!

Entrepreneurs are usually better educated than their parents.

Nope, I’m not! very proud that my father has even two degrees — in business adminstration and in medicine. My mother is not far behind with an advanced teaching degree.

Entrepreneurship doesn’t always run in the family. More than half (51.9 percent) of respondents were the first in their families to launch a business.

I kind of am. My father is since a few years working as an independent consultant, after he got tired of the realities of employment in the public healthcare in Sweden. But while I grew up, my parents were both working in the public sector and I’m the first one trying entrepreneurship at the scale MummyMug necessarily entails. 

The majority of respondents (75.4 percent) had worked as employees at other companies for more than six years before launching their own companies.

Tick and no tick! Does 10 years’ work experience, albeit in a very different field and for a public institution count.…. ?

Last but not least: Networks count. Professional networks were important to the success of the current businesses for 73 percent of the entrepreneurs in the study. In comparison, 62 percent felt the same way about personal networks.

Certainly agree. Networks are everything. Without them, you don’t get forward and you have nothing to fall back on when need be.

All in all — that’s quite encouraging, actually. At least if I can prove to make something out of this good start in life that I got ;-)
Who lives will see…

And in the meantime, tell me: what is your outlook?

CE-marking: not the most interesting subject for a creative entrepreneurs, who’d rather spend time on design, marketing plans and challenging online conversations.

But for anyone who plans to lawfully introduce a product on the EU market, like we do, CE-marking is of course not an optional subject to tackle.
You simply have to know which norms that your product must comply with, and make sure you take the necessary steps to met the standard — or you could be facing a costly recall and see your dream disappear from the market faster than you can say ‘hepp’! That is a risk no entrepreneur should take.

For MummyMug, we started looking into this quite some time ago, and I must say that the quest for the answer to the magic CE question has been long and winding.
It has taken me through erratic google searches, discussions with various labs, institutions and experts; and even some brave attempts to chew my way through dense source texts of EU legislation.

I’ve had different answers from different experts and been pointed in all sorts of directions, leaving me feel more confused each time — and not one step closer to where I had to be: with a well-structured Technical File ready for inspection should someone ask for it.

In the end, the solution was just around the corner: with fellow entrepreneur Han Zuyderwijk who runs the online business CE-Marking.net from a base in The Hague.

Han  has a really fresh approach to CE-marking that can save everyone in product development a lot of money: the Do It Yourself CE-Certification.

Han is an experienced CE-marking lawyer, who used to work for the Big Established CE-Marking Laboratory. Over the years, he saw how the CE-marking industry created a kind of mystery cloud around the whole CE-marking process, making clients feel that CE-marking is something very complicated — which it is.

But what he really did not like, was that the established laboratories all seem to have agreed on a well-kept trade secret: namely giving clients the impression that there is no way around hiring the expensive The Big Established CE-Marking Laboratory to get the CE-marking organised. And luckily, there certainly is away around that costly process.

Han’s recipe is simple: he starts with stating the simple truth that in almost 90% of the cases, the CE marking regulations allow products to be self-certified for CE marking.

In other words, you can simply do the CE marking yourself. He does not say it is easy, but for a very reasonable fee, he does provides a rich resource base, a professional scan and a practical toolbox with templates and checklists to help you help yourself: to structure your work and process, with everything from understanding the basics of CE marking, mapping the norms applicable, make a plan for conduct and properly document a confirmity assessment and setting up the necessary paperwork for your Technical File, that eventually will result from all this hard work that lies ahead of you.

Because hard work it is: using CE Marking.net is no shortcut. As for so many things that come an entrepreneur’s way, choosing for Do-It-Yourself-CE Marking means simply roll up your sleeves, put in the hours and the effort and get it done.

What makes CE Marking different is that it takes a fresh perspective to something that seems completely impossible at first sight. And perhaps even more beneficial is that CE Marking.net empowers you to know your game, know your product and become even sharper for the next product you hopefully will develop sometime in the future. Not putting it in the hands of an expensive consultant that will bill you every time you call.

And the service helps you save up to 80% of the cost you would have had by using a 3rd party.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is why CE-Marking.net should be standard included in your entreprenurship toolbox.

I was browsing the web today for a smart and fun present for a good friend of mine who just had her first baby. You know the situation: it has to be practical, fun, original, useful, cool… and cost somewhere around max 25 euros (since MANY friends tend to have kids this year). Via the great Dutch webplatform Trotse Moeders (‘Proud Mothers’), managed very well by a newly found IRL friend of mine, I stumbled upon some great hand-made Nappy Wallets from the Aussie Mum-invented brand ‘Belly Bumps To Baby Hugs’- and thought — hey! This is a winner!

The Nappy Wallet will hold (surprise..!) those nappies any new mother simply needs to bring as soon as she leaves the house, plus all the other essentials: wipes, small tube of nappy rash cream and other small items that are useful when one is out and about. And has it has small pieces of ribbon at the bottom,one to attach the keys to and the other to attach a dummy to. Finished off with a handy strap, so it can be hung on the stroller.

Handy to just grab and go — and makes that big, bulky, heavy diaper bag, that I used to lounge around, history!

As I’m sure my friend has better things to do right now, with a 2 day old baby in her arms, than read my blog, I am pretty sure it will still be a surprise when she unwraps it. But I’ll surely ask for a review again a few months’ down the line, when the Nappy Wallet hopefully has come to good use!

Today, I met Navah who runs Tag-On; a communication consultancy that develops practical, hands-on Social Media Strategies for brands and companies. We were sitting next to each other the blogger’s group that meets up every two weeks at the business centre where I am based, the Women’s Business Initiative in The Hague: a great way to get some discipline in the blogging, share best practices and — get blogging!

But most importantly, it generates real-life encounters, like this one. Normally, I feature Mumpreneurs who have invented a product, but this time, I make way for Navah.

Navah is a recent Mumpreneur who has a three-year old daugther and started her business this year. Her passion is to share the insight that

“no matter what business you are working in, there is always a way you can benefit from social media!”

Her blog is a stream of good tips and links to useful resources, such as her latest post which is a concise description of how Facebook’s new privacy controls work, illustrated in a simple screen capture.

Follow Navah on Twitter , check out her blog and Facebook page!

My heart goes out to the parents and family of a 2-year-old American boy, who tragically died last Wednesday as the result of a scalding burn. His arm, neck and torso were scalded four days earlier, when the boy was reaching for a tumbler of hot water that had been boiled to prepare tea. Doctors now research the results from microbiology and toxicology tests to conclude how the scald could develop into a fatal.

Since I started my MummyMug adventure in 2007, I have come across study after study that repeat the same message: scalds from hot drinks are frequent and cause serious injury in children.

But this is the first case of a hot water scald injury resulting in death that I have ever seen reported. Should this unnecessary accident in spite of all precautions you take happen in your home: please — take the advice to see the doc­tor if the scald is larger than a poststamp. Let’s make sure we never have reason to publish a piece of news like this one again.

Playgroup planning should start already before the litte ones have arrived! For me, it felt completely natural to stay in touch with the other parents in my prenatal/birth class, that I and husband followed during the pregnancy.   After our babies were born, we got together to see who had been hiding there inside each of our bellies, and to share experiences.

Forming a playgroup from a prenatal class often works very well: the babies are all around the same age and born within a couple of weeks of one another), you usually live relatively close to each other and are on maternity/paternity leave in the same period.

Did you also form a playgroup with the buddies in your prenatal class?

Photo: we extend our thanks to Healingdream / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

In new research published at Malmo University, Sweden, Anna Carlsson (PhD), confirms the picture that we see over and over again in accident statistics around the world: hot liquid is a major culprit of scalds in small children.

The study kept track of the number of children being brought to health posts and hospitals in one city in Sweden for treatment. 148 children came for burn injuries. 80% of those injuries were scalds, caused by hot liquid (71%) or hot food (29%). The greatest number was boys between one and two years old.

Second, Anna analysed the causes of the scalds.  One key conclusion is that an accidental scald is more likely to happen when something is unusual and out of the daily routine:  during a sudden visit by a friend or when a family member was tired, stressed or ill.

Another trigger was the misjudgement of the child’s capabilities. Given the quick motoric developments that children go through during their first years, the parents expressed that they often didn’t realise that the child had acquired the capacity to for example actively reach for a cup until the accident had already occurred.

I need to find around 20 Mums — and Dads! — who would be willing to take part in a user test for MummyMug, which we will run in June.
It is part of a last validation test before we ramp up production, and simply consists of using a MummyMug at home for a week, and then telling me about the experience.

So, where to start looking for these test pilots? Of course it needs to be parents with small kids, who like to drink tea and coffee, and who preferably are members a group that meets up anyway, so I can benefit from connecting with several people being in the same place at one time.

In other words: I need to find a playgroup!  As Eleonore is already pushing 5 and goes to school, the ones I used to go to are no longer active.

Someone gave me the tip that many playgroups nowadays are registered on MeetUp.com.

OK, said and done: I simply ticked in ‘Playgroup’ in the search-field, and… voila, 2,615 results, including one in Amsterdam. with 161 participants.It has a 5-star rating, so it must be fun!

I’ve fired off an email to the group organiser, and now I can only wait and see if they are happy to check out me and my MummyMugs.

Because I totally respect that these groups are of course not for companies to contact without permission. I hope they agree to see me — to be continued!

I just had a lovely email exchange with Louice, who runs 2 volunteer led baby and toddler groups in a Berwick-upon-Tweed in the North of England. 40 families use the group she has started to get together, support each other and have fun.

Precisely what playgroups are all about — see my previous blog posts on coffee morning / playgroup safety, what to serve and other tips.

Due to safety reasons, Louice avoids serving hot drinks to parents in her groups. Smart.

But she inquired about the MummyMug to be able to instead serve hot drinks safely — smarter!!

As they operate on a shoestring budget, we have discussed a cooperation whereby we could consider sponsoring the group with mugs once it reaches the market.

Let’s hope we can make that happen! I can’t wait to hear the stories and see the pics from the happy faces of Mums and Dads finally being able to enjoy their tea again. Thanks again Louise for getting in touch!

As Swedish as I and the MummyMug are, we also have another root, namely the region of Twente in the East of the Netherlands.

Why there, you would think? Well, you are looking at yet another lovepat; as I followed my Dutch husband Han back to live in his home town Haaksbergen in 2007. Haaksbergen and Twente  is thus where I started developing my idea for the MummyMug. As a new arrival in a new country, I literally had to start from the beginning: learning the language, building my network and try to work out how on earth to start the adventure of translating the idea for the product concept MummyMug to a real product.

Today, the regional newspaper Tubantia has published a fantastic feature article on MummyMug. It is unfortunately not available online, as it has been placed in their special periodical De Ondernemer (‘The Entrepreneur’). I take it as a great honor: not only is it great publicity, it is — knowing the Twents culture — a real token of recognition. And in Twente, it takes time and effort for a newcomer to earn his or her place.

You see: living in Twente is not just living in yet another part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.  It is living in Twente.  This region and its proud inhabitants, calling themselves Tukkers, really have a sense of special community and many have lived here for generations. There is even such a thing as a movement for the Free Republic of Twente (in Dutch) — that  even hands out Twentse passports to people who swear allegiance to the Twentse flag. Yep, this is possible in a country like the Netherlands, built on the principles of acceptance and liberty. The Tukkers speak a special dialect — Twents — that really is so different in vocabulary and pronounciation from  regular Dutch, that it is difficult for someone who has learned regular Dutch to  understand it. And no wonder: an online dictionary of Twents count almost 1,700 specific Twentse words!

So in today’s blog, I want to return the favour: I am also very proud of Twente!

The first person I came in contact with was Martin Grevers, who designed the concept of the MummyMug. Read more about this creative inventor and our cooperation here. During an intensive first year of product development, I also got to know a range of other creative partners, such as the design bureau Indes in Enschede, teachers at the Industrial Design Department at Saxion Hogeschool and at Technische Universiteit Twente , and support and advice from the Industrial design Centre that have helped me come in contact with the right people at the right moment. I even got personal advice more than once from the Mayor of Enschede, Mr Peter Den Oudsten.

Wherever I have come, I have felt the creative and entrepreneurial spirit of Twente and am very grateful for the contributions of all partners that have helped and encouraged me along the way. Without the warm welcome that Twente offered to a newly arrived Swedish woman with not much more than a good idea in her pocket, the MummyMug would probably never have gotten off the ground. And although I am based in The Hague nowadays, I go to Twente often and still work regularly with my Twentse partners.

Thus — I’m proud to say, on behalf of MummyMug: Wij Zijn Tukkers — and proud of it!