Playing House: Why Entrepreneurs Build While Wantrepreneurs Perform

The Critical Distinction Between Those Who Build and Those Who Pretend

“The world doesn’t care how many times you fall, as long as it’s one less than the number of times you get back up.” — Chris Gardner, The Pursuit of Happyness

Lisa and I met Dan Cohen over coffee at Peet's during a visit to our daughter at Wake Forest. As the Whitaker Executive Director of Entrepreneurship, Cohen distilled years of observation into a crucial distinction: entrepreneurs build while wantrepreneurs merely perform.

To illustrate this divide, Dan shared Nori's origin—a company born when Wake Forest students Courtney Toll and Annabel Love transformed their dorm-room hack of using hair straighteners into a legitimate business, eventually raising $1.3 million despite significant obstacles in the hardware industry.

Later that day, Lisa and I strolled down Trade Street where we passed Fancy Groceries—a men's lifestyle boutique showcasing curated clothing. Inside, we met the owners, Max and his wife Laura. Max had abandoned a successful but unfulfilling career in Los Angeles film to create this thoughtfully designed space in Winston-Salem. As he spoke, the entrepreneurial spirit radiated from him—raw, authentic, and unmistakable.

Max hadn't set out to "be an entrepreneur"; he'd recognized that this growing town needed authentic style and sophistication—and rather than merely talking about it, he built it. His boutique embodied everything Cohen and I had discussed: a business born not from pitch decks and buzzwords but from recognizing an unmet need with clarity of purpose.

That's when it crystallized for me: what separates entrepreneurs from wantrepreneurs isn't skill, connections, or even luck—it's the fundamental difference between building and performing. Like children playing house who mimic family life without understanding its complexities, wantrepreneurs go through the motions of entrepreneurship without creating anything of lasting value.

The Silent Builder vs. The Vocal Player

The contrast begins with identity. True entrepreneurs rarely self-identify as such. They're too consumed by the problem at hand. Ask Bezos in 1997 what he was doing and he wouldn't have launched into a discourse on entrepreneurship—he'd have talked about books and the internet. The identity follows the work, not the other way around.

Labels matter to those who haven't yet earned them. Substance seeks no announcement; emptiness requires constant proclamation.

Wantrepreneurs lead with the label. They've mastered the vernacular of Sandhill Road and can mimic the cadence of a TechCrunch interview, but there's no substance beneath the performance. Like children "playing doctor" without medical knowledge, they speak of TAMs and CACs with fluency while having no customers. They know the form but miss the function.

Collision vs. Calculation: The Birth of Real Solutions

Both Nori and Fancy Groceries began with collisions, not calculations. Companies that last don't start with spreadsheets. They start with frustrations. Hastings built Netflix after Blockbuster charged him a $40 late fee. Personal irritation, not market analysis, drives real entrepreneurship.

This explains the resilience gap. When solving your own problem, quitting isn't an option. The wantrepreneur starts with the exit in mind, working backward to locate a suitably impressive problem. When obstacles appear—and they always do—there's no conviction to push through. Like children abandoning their play kitchen when a new toy arrives, the commitment evaporates at the first sign of resistance.

The Foundation Builder vs. The Milestone Chaser

Watch how someone measures progress and you'll see their true nature. Entrepreneurs build foundations—creating products that fulfill genuine needs, finding customers who derive real value, establishing unit economics that work. These things aren't visible from the outside, but they're the only things that matter.

Just as a child's play house stands empty while a real home shelters lives, wantrepreneurs chase milestones—the funding announcement, the conference slot, the podcast interview. Each serves as a proxy for progress without requiring the messy work of building something people want.

The result: "successful failures"—companies that raise funds, generate press, and create the appearance of momentum without building viable businesses. They're movie sets—impressive facades with nothing behind them.

Truth-Seeking vs. Narrative Maintenance: The Reality Test

Both Max and the Nori founders shared a relentless pursuit of truth that Cohen emphasized in our conversation. Entrepreneurs have an almost pathological relationship with reality. They hunt for uncomfortable truths because delusion is fatal. When Zuckerberg realized mobile was Facebook's future, he reoriented the entire company despite the pain.

Wantrepreneurs, having sold a narrative to investors and themselves, become captive to it. Contradictory evidence becomes something to explain away rather than adapt to. Customer feedback that doesn't fit the story gets dismissed as "not understanding the vision." The narrative becomes a prison, not a hypothesis.

Signal vs. Noise in the Building Process

The startup world is awash in noise: pitch competitions in San Francisco, founder dinners in New York, accelerator demo days in Austin, innovation summits in Miami. Wantrepreneurs mistake this noise for progress. They measure success by Twitter followers and LinkedIn connections.

The ecosystem has created an elaborate game that looks remarkably like building but accomplishes nothing. Noise is often just successful entrepreneurs monetizing wantrepreneurs.

Entrepreneurs filter signal from noise. They track metrics that actually matter: retention, margins, viral coefficients. These rarely make for good social media posts, but they're the vital signs of companies that will survive. While the children playing house focus on appearances, those building real homes focus on foundations.

The Market's Inevitable Verdict: Reality's Final Say

Markets are efficient truth machines. No amount of narrative crafting indefinitely masks a business that doesn't work. WeWork's valuation crashed when it met economic reality. Theranos collapsed when its technology failed scrutiny. Reality always wins.

The psychology behind wantrepreneurship persists despite these facts. Founders confuse correlation with causation. They see successful companies with glossy slide decks and assume the slides created the success. This copycat approach produces founders who build investor decks before products. Who perfect their pitch before their service. Like children imitating adults without understanding why, they optimize for observable metrics while missing the foundation beneath.

When the market delivers its verdict, the difference is binary. One has built something with intrinsic value. The other has created an image that dissolves under scrutiny.

The Quiet Commitment

Real entrepreneurship isn't performative. It's unglamorous problem-solving. Hours refining products no one sees yet. Conversations with customers who don't understand why you're asking so many questions. Late nights wondering if this iteration will finally work.

This work doesn't make compelling Instagram stories. It rarely features at conferences. But it builds companies that last.

Walking back to our car from Fancy Groceries, I realized what Cohen and Max had shown me: entrepreneurship isn't a role to play but a problem to solve. The entrepreneurs who succeed aren't those with the most polished performance but those with the most determined persistence. Max didn't set out to be an entrepreneur; he set out to bring something missing to his adopted hometown. The label followed the work—not the other way around.

In the end, the scoreboard isn't measured in noise or appearances. It's measured in what's built — and what lasts.

In a world obsessed with speed and optics, building something meaningful comes from doing the work. Not talking about it. Not dressing like a founder. Not playing the part. Just building.

Markets don't care about fundraising headlines or conference keynotes. They reward revenue, margins, and retention. The children playing house eventually go home.