A Forbes 30 under 30 shares some home truths about entrepreneurship
PR is good as long as you know it is only a tool, not a benchmark. Twenty things five years of building actually taught me.
They call me a "social entrepreneur," but I always prefer to call myself an "entrepreneur wannabe." But regardless of the name, what we do should revolve around a purpose, about having an entrepreneurial idea that someone brings to life.
It sounds appealing, but entrepreneurship is way beyond the fairy tale of establishing a company and succeeding or failing, and for five years, I've been trying very hard to make it through that entrepreneurship maze. After I launched Nakhweh, the first volunteerism and development network in the Arab World, and Ideation Box, providing impact communication solutions for the development sector, I got a lot of PR. But that too can sometimes be harmful.
It turned out that the thing I got most PR for was actually my wake-up call. In January of this year I was listed in Forbes' 30 under 30 and this took me through a period of exceptional fame and put me on Cloud 9 for a couple of weeks, until I felt the impact of the wake-up call. What entrepreneurs need to remember is that "PR is good as long as you know that it's only a tool, not a benchmark or an ego booster."