In order to define the term tech entrepreneur, we need to underline the difference between research and commercialization. While research discovers something and adds to the knowledge base, commercialization moves the findings of a research or technology from the portals of a lab to the wider market place towards profitability. Commercialization of technology can happen through several means including licensing, partnering or selling your original product idea to an enterprise that will in turn market it and pay you the royalty.
Tech entrepreneurs differ from the regular entrepreneurs in the way that they need to be successful with two concerns simultaneously. While a regular entrepreneur needs to find out the ways to profitable sales of his or her product, a tech entrepreneur must also see how technology works in the targeted customer’s environment.
Tech entrepreneur can create two types of businesses namely life style business and a high growth business. Lifestyle businesses do not have the objective of growing rapidly and therefore do not involve the strategies required for this. It is unlikely that these kinds of businesses generate interests from outside the business. These kinds of businesses do not have the potential required to generate great wealth. People wish to start a lifestyle business to be their own bosses, work as per their schedules and to be able to compromise with the big payoff in order to stay within the comfort zone. A high growth business has a huge potential to generate massive wealth. It can be described as high risk high reward proposition that attracts venture capitalists. Some of the startling examples under this category include Google, i-Robot Corporation, Dell, EMC, Facebook, Solazyme, Zipcar Genzyme, and Natural Composites.