Week 14 Response -- Risk and Entrepreneurship

This post is a response to the question "Which type of entrepreneurship involves more risk for the entrepreneur?" posed by @corndog2k2.
I think political entrepreneurship involves more risk. One of the factors that contributes to political entrepreneurship being more precarious than market entrepreneurship is the larger target group. With market entrepreneurship, entrepreneurs can choose as specific of a demographic as they want to, depending on their certain skills and how many people they want purchasing their product or service. The success of a market entrepreneur is easier to achieve because the market entrepreneur has the freedom to choose the amount and kind of target customers. With political entrepreneurship, in order to be successful, the entrepreneur has to gain a much larger group of customers and a wider demographic range. In the United States, there are essentially only two group of customers to choose from: the Republican or Democratic Party. Each party includes a variety of different people, making it that much harder for the political entrepreneur to perfectly cater to each person. In the United States especially, successful political entrepreneurship is more difficult to achieve because of the polarizing parties. In the 2016 presidential election, 48.0% of the United States population voted for Hillary Clinton, 45.9% voted for Donald Trump, and 6.1% voted for somebody else. (New York Times) In the 2020 presidential election, 51.3% of the United States population voted for Joe Biden, 46.8% voted for Donald Trump, and only 1.8% voted for somebody else. (NBC) This shows the dramatic increase in polarizing parties because of the decrease in people voting for someone other than the major candidates. Lastly, political entrepreneurship is more risky than market entrepreneurship because the people you know and the connections you have matter more. Three of the four children of President Joe Biden work for the government at some level. They have been put under more scrutiny because of their relationship with the President, but their careers reflect the benefits they receive from this relationship and the other hardworking people they probably beat out for the positions. In conclusion, market entrepreneurship is less risky than political entrepreneurship.

Image Source