Thief Phase

Business is Good with Chris Cooper · Aug 21, 2023 · 7m

In my book "Founder, Farmer, Tinker, Thief", I broke the entrepreneurial journey down into four phases.

In the Founder Phase, the entrepreneur is wearing all the hats. They're bootstrapping, staying up late, building and testing products, learning to sell, opening the business early and closing it late. In many cases, they're self-employed: they've really just bought themselves a job.

In Farmer Phase, the founder begins to add staff and systems to make the business grow. They turn their attention to the crops (products or services) that grow well; hire people to plant, tend and harvest the…