Did You Celebrate National Entrepreneurs’ Day This Year?
The answer of course is, no. Because there is no National Entrepreneurs’ Day. We have a day to recognize the importance of mothers, fathers, grandparents, and even love (Valentine’s Day), but currently there is no day set aside to honor the contributions entrepreneurs have made in our society. Now a couple of creative young entrepreneurs are out to change that. David Hauser and Siamak Taghaddos, founders of Grasshopper Group, have created a movement to get President Barack Obama to declare March 20th, 2011 as the first National Entrepreneurs’ Day, and they’re using a medium close to the President’s heart to do it – the Internet. Their site, EntrepreneursDay.org, taps into the power of Twitter to spread the word and reach their goal of 1,000,000 “signatures.”
So what’s this movement all about? According to the organizers, it’s about what we entrepreneurs have always known: Entrepreneurs are the true drivers of the economy and the ones who will take the doom and gloom we hear from so called economic “experts” every day on the news and turn it around. We’re the ones who either don’t pay any attention to the media and others claiming everything is so, so terrible, or hear them out then do our thing anyway. From building and leasing real estate and engaging professional firms to buying materials and supplies, and of course adding jobs, entrepreneurs collectively keep our economy driving forward. Siamak Taghaddos says, “Entrepreneurs are America’s real ‘bailout’,” and he’s absolutely right.
So should we have a day recognizing entrepreneurs? Of course we should. Other countries acknowledge the contributions of entrepreneurs with their own Entrepreneur Days. Even China does so! It seems strange that the most entrepreneurial country in the world doesn’t do the same. After all, the entrepreneurial spirit is what made the U.S. possible. Our founding fathers were full of entrepreneurial qualities, like the need to be independent, an ability to think outside the box, and a will to buck the system. Let’s give that spirit its due and get behind the push for National Entrepreneurs’ Day.
At the time of this writing, only a couple of days after its launch, the site has just over 1,000 supporters, and it’s growing fast. Some of the more prominent supporters are Pat Condon, founder of Rackspace, Noah Everett, founder of TwitPic, 37Signals founder and author, Jason Fried, and Dharmesh Shah, the founder of HubSpot. Of course the list is huge, but that’s a few. Now it’s your turn. Head over to EntrepreneursDay.org and join the cause. It’s a quick and painless signup with your Twitter account, and you just might get some recognition too. And you’ll know you were part of history next March, when you hear people saying, “Happy Entrepreneurs’ Day!”