Entrepreneurs Are So Damn Weird

The only way to succeed is to understand what makes you different and be faithful to it

Joe Procopio
5 min readApr 18, 2022

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Over the past two decades, I’ve been lucky enough to be a repeat startup founder, and I’ve also had the opportunity to work alongside some of the top serial entrepreneurs in the country. And there’s one thing I can say about every single one of us.

We’re all a bunch of weirdos.

It’s something that neither surprises me nor is it off-putting in any way. In fact, taking my own weirdness into account, I not only naturally gravitate towards curious people, but I’ve come to realize that I seek them out.

I’m not going to go so far as to declare that the stranger the character, the better the entrepreneur. But I have concluded that being strange definitely helps. That is, once you admit it and come to terms with it.

Let’s get weird.

Define “Weird”

Look, I’m not talking clown shoes or a fake British accent. I’m not talking about being weird for the sake of attention. I’m actually referring to those innate-but-awkward qualities that make good entrepreneurs: the qualities that drive them to swim upstream against a current that most of the world calls normal.

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Joe Procopio

I'm a multi-exit, multi-failure entrepreneur. AI pioneer. Technologist. Innovator. Humanist. Write at Inc.com and BuiltIn.com. More about me at joeprocopio.com