Everyone around the serial entrepreneur was telling him that they couldn?t see anything unique about the start-up?s offering. Everyone was pointing out that similar offerings already exist in the market. They were talking about technical, marketing, and business model problems, but the serial entrepreneur was not listening. After all, hadn?t he sold his first company very profitably when all seemed lost? Of course, that his first company was acquired was a fortuitous matter that occurred through a chance meeting with a potential partner?not something that was consciously engineered.

One of the important traits of an entrepreneur is humility?humility that?s coupled with confidence. Humility allows entrepreneurs to learn from others, while confidence permits them to go around meeting players in the network, weed out ?noise? to distil the essence of the learnings, and make appropriate course corrections without compromising the fundamental vision of their companies.

Many entrepreneurs have perfected the art of interacting with ?confident humility?, but, an unfortunately great number, is trapped inside the cages of their own making. These are the entrepreneurs who are convinced that their technology product or service offering is destined to change the world only because they think so. Their personality is stamped all over the start-up. These entrepreneurs have limited or no understanding of the industry, market, customer needs and competitive positions. They are the ones spoilt by previous successes either in earlier start-ups or in corporate life. Never mind what their specific contribution to that success was.

Taking a cue from their earlier experience, they think that lightning can indeed strike twice at the same place. They start believing that their PR releases are gospel and start discarding the cloak of humility. They start thinking they are invincible, that their companies are indeed making a huge difference to the world and are creating enormous value. Over time, they stop listening. They don?t read about what?s going on in their industry or meet people who are knowledgeable about their world. They rationalise their ignorance by saying that the world doesn?t yet understand their company. Over time, people around these entrepreneurs stop providing feedback since they don?t see anyone listening.

The entrepreneur now displays one of two behaviours: one is to ignore or even dismiss all the signals from the outside world, work only with people who listen, use the halo of the success of the earlier start-up to blind others into submission. The other occurs where the entrepreneur?s demeanour changes to incorporate a studied intellectual indifference or nonchalance and indeed, sartorial tastes also change to showcase expensive branded accoutrements. They now go out only to conferences (including, of course, press conferences), meet only people of ?stature?, are unwilling to travel to rural and semi-urban areas of the market, and have their underlings meet the various industry players.

In both cases, the entrepreneur enters the twilight zone of ?living in denial?. Arrogance replaces confidence. Discarding humility results in ignorance. Increased ignorance results in a continued life of denial. Increased denial results in increased or continued arrogance. A dangerous cycle, ?Arrogance of Ignorance?, therefore, comes into play. This feeds on the insecurities and the anxieties of the entrepreneur and those around him. It is not surprising, therefore, to expect such an entrepreneurial company to start imploding. Unfortunately, the implosion doesn?t occur in one grand finale. It is a process that?s painful as it drags on for several months as the entrepreneur clutches at fewer and fewer straws while still refusing to see the writing on the wall. This is emotionally draining for all concerned, especially for those around the entrepreneur. For the entrepreneur himself, the learning from a failure is more than from a success. Failure forces introspection and encourages humility. If nothing else, there?s no arrogance of ignorance.

The author is an advocate of entrepreneurship development. He?s involved with Nasscom, TiE, IIM-Bangalore, and Insead Business School in driving entrepreneurship.

He can be reached at sanjay@jumpstartup.net. These are his personal views