I agree with Nick's personal insights: successful entrepreneurs are curious, more optimist than defeatist, confident in themselves, resilient and tenacious. Entrepreneurs understand that it's not because things are difficult that we dare not venture. Entrepreneurs accept that learning is a process of discovery, if they can learn by first taking risks with money that is not theirs that is useful but fundamentally an entrepreneur knows that not daring is what makes things difficult (adapted from Seneca.)

And yes, the rewards of successful entrepreneurship are autonomy and being master of one's own destiny. As Dan Pink puts it: "we're meant to be autonomous individuals, not individual automatons." The prerequisite for autonomy implies that an entrepreneur will themselves, no matter what, in a world that does everything to makes being autonomous hard (less so in the USA) but true in Europe. That's where the determination, resilience and tenacity come in.

Beyond the etymology of the word (borrowed from the French) would you agree that an entrepreneur is someone who accepts the risk of going too far to find out how they can go or is that an adventurer/ discoverer. I'm curious where the boundaries lie between captain of industry and entrepreneur?