About 20% of businesses fail during their first year. So which traits should an entrepreneur have to become successful in a highly competitive environment? Starting a business isn’t easy, especially in the modern environment that favours sound, long-lasting practices and a severe loss-aversion mentality. While not everyone is born to be an entrepreneur, there are skills one can learn to jumpstart a business venture in a competitive industry. And even be successful at it. It’s important to note that some traits can’t be learned and are what separates a good entrepreneur from the best. The list of traits found here includes both intrinsic and trainable skills.

1. Inventiveness

One of the key features of successful entrepreneurs is their ability to come up with new ideas and expand on existing features. That’s why most entrepreneurs start their business with an idea that deviates from and improves upon the current norm.

While it’s almost impossible to teach someone how to be inventive, all people possess virtually unlimited imagination and potential. Tapping into that can lead to exciting results.

2. Confidence

One of the crucial parts of a successful start-up is the pitch. A good entrepreneur needs to have confidence both in themselves and their idea. That confidence is what will sell the start-up to potential investors and allow the business to begin operations.

Entrepreneurs will face rejection along the way, and only those who remain confident enough to keep going will bounce back and thrive among the competition.

3. Work Ethic

The term ‘passion’ is often thrown around as a desirable trait, but it would be more proper to call it work ethic.

While an entrepreneur will enjoy doing what they created, a proper work ethic is what truly matters.

An entrepreneur needs to put long hours into their business to take it off the ground. That won’t be possible if they don’t love their work or have a developed work ethic to sustain it.

4. Money Management

One of the critical reasons start-ups fail over their first few years is the futile acquisition of capital. This isn’t so surprising, seeing as banks are unlikely to provide large loans.

Other methods of raising capital, such as crowdfunding or investing, often depend on tangential skills like the ability to persuade people about the idea.

While having a good idea is the key for a start-up, obtaining and managing the capital required to make it into a reality is what separates a successful start-up from a failed one.

5. Knowing Market Needs

While not a trait per se, knowing that an idea for a start-up has real market value and need is what gets a start-up off the ground.

The ability to develop and market an idea into an attractive product relies on more skills than one, but they all need to combine to deliver to the masses.

According to Forbes, most start-ups fail due to a lack of market need. Therefore, identifying whether a novel idea is useful and adjusting it to cater to the audience should be one of the top priorities.

Learning What It Takes to Succeed

Thankfully, most of the traits of a successful entrepreneur are learnable. For all others, there are always people who can help out and make up for personal shortcomings.

Teamwork makes the dream work, after all.