Published on: April 21, 2026 at 4:31 pm
Entrepreneurial success stories—central to the American economy and global capitalism—are often portrayed as the result of heroic individual efforts. But Academy of Management Scholar Howard Aldrich of the University of North Carolina says that successful entrepreneurs and business leaders almost always had help. Whether it’s Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak starting Apple in a garage or a woman opening a local shop, entrepreneurs need support, especially during a startup’s early days.
“You have to be in a social network of people who are going to encourage you, say positive things, and be helpful in their suggestions,” Aldrich says.
“It isn’t just a single individual but maybe two, three, four in the beginning who are playing a role in helping that entrepreneur mobilize their resources and think through the scenarios that an entrepreneur starting out—especially one with little experience—might not be aware of,” he says.
Entrepreneurs need more than words of encouragement and advice. They need tangible help from a widening circle of friends, community acquaintances, and other collaborators, investors, and clients who are referred to them through intermediaries.
“Almost every person we studied who said they were trying to start a business mentioned at least one or two other people they thought of as helping them,” Aldrich says. “Some of them used other people as providers of capital, of course.
“But many of them talked about others who provided important help and support, not in the form of money, but rather things such as childcare, setting up an office or store, designing logos, and doing public relations,” he says.
One of the problems with the heroic individual entrepreneur myth, according to Aldrich, is that it makes people think they should be able to do it on their own. Thus, they don’t seek out the kind of social support that would really help them.
“If people who are not in advantageous resource positions believe they must do it on their own, they’re likely to fail,” Aldrich says. “We need to take the under-resourced person and say, ‘You don’t have to do this on your own—you don’t have to be wealthy, charismatic, or well-connected.
“You can find support from your network in your community, and that will lessen the burden on you and make it more possible to succeed.’”
Aldrich says there is another, possibly surprising, negative result of the myth of the heroic individual entrepreneur.
“When you have this idea that it’s heroic individualism, then the people who don’t make it have an easy excuse,” Aldrich says. “They say ‘Well, I’m just not like those people; I don’t have what it takes.’ They excuse their failure. They excuse their lack of trying.
“And so, the myth of the heroic individual prematurely discourages the people who give up too quickly as opposed to saying, ‘Maybe I just haven’t talked to the right people—maybe I just haven’t combed through the folks I should have been talking with, because I supposed I should make it alone and I’m not enough of a hero to succeed,’” he says.
“That’s a recipe for failure.”
