Last week, I came across 5 reasons we need a new word for entrepreneurs, by Robert Jones of Penpoint Group. Robert suggests ‘Venturist’ or ‘Venturer’ and is requesting everyone to hashtag it over Twitter so it can be a trending topic & this “antipreneur” movement can gain momentum. Anyways, his list goes like…

- It’s French.

- It’s ridiculously hard to type.

- It’s not Twitter friendly.

- It’s been thoroughly bastardized. (mompreneur, solopreneur, and intrapreneur, etc.).

- It’s begging for a lawsuit. (from Entrepreneur Magazine).

I tweeted back at him suggesting ‘Owner’ be that new word to which he quickly replied:

In a later tweet, he also told me that Tim Berry, President and founder of Palo Alto Software and Founder of bplans.com has suggested ‘empresario’ and is writing a post on it. I promised Robert a post that will explain the difference between Owner & Small Business Owner and moved on to the next thing on my list.

Before I get into the difference between Small Business Owner and Owner, let me list my 5 reason why ‘Owner’ should be the new ‘entrepreneur’

- It’s English. Plain English.

- It’s ridiculously easy to type and remember.

- It is twitter friendly. 58% shorter than entrepreneur.

- It can be bastardized as much as you want too – mom-owner, solo-owner, young-owner… Point is, this term is broad, inclusive, and found in Dictionary.

- Unless there’s an ‘Owner’ magazine suing people left, right, and center for using the word ‘Owner’, it would be fairly “lawsuit” free.

Now, the difference between small business owner and owner is the same as difference between small business owner and entrepreneur.

Don’t be surprised! Let me ask you, why do we call an apple, apple and if the fruit would change if we started calling it with a different name?

The answer is because we have been told so, we see everyone doing so… Apple was the name given and it derived its meaning, image, and existence from there. Even if we all simply decide a universal replacement of ‘apple’, the fruit won’t change a bit. We all would just call it with a different name. It’s the same situation. The hustle, the drive, the creativity, the passion, the ambition and everything else that makes someone an entrepreneur won’t change a bit if we all decided on a universal replacement of the term. Why not ‘owner’ then? Because from what I see, an entrepreneur is nothing but an owner, an owner who is responsible for everything, be it a win or loss, be it good or bad. Let’s take an example of home owner, just like a home owner responsible for everything from a leak in the kitchen sink to ants in the porch, from keeping the house clean to making the mortgage payment, an entrepreneur is responsible for everything from getting the idea off the ground to getting the first customer and many to follow, from keeping an eye on competition to making the payroll of the staff. The only problem I see with this term’s adoption is a potential ‘subprime’ in business ownership.

If you guys don’t like ‘Owner’, how about ‘Captain’ (of the ship)? Please leave your comment and suggestions below.