Entrepreneur in 1755: Cantillon names the entrepreneur

It is the only profession on this site with no license, no degree requirement and no governing body anywhere on earth. The exam is the market, and it fails roughly half of all new firms within five years in most OECD countries. It is also far larger than the startup mythology suggests: the International Labour Organization counts nearly half the world's workers as self-employed, most of them running necessity-driven micro-businesses, not venture-backed companies.

This page follows the undertaking itself from Assyrian caravan financiers and the medieval commenda contract to the Dutch East India Company, Schumpeter's "creative destruction" and Y Combinator's demo day. It covers how people actually get in and get funded, what a founder's day and craft look like, eight founders from six countries who built things that outlived them, and how much of the job AI can realistically absorb.

Do you need a degree to become an entrepreneur? No. Entrepreneurship is unlicensed everywhere; no country requires a qualification to register a company. In practice most successful founders have education and, more importantly, industry experience: a large US Census study published in 2018 found the average founder of the fastest-growing new firms was 45 at founding. Customers and investors, not examiners, decide who continues.