I'll start by telling you that I don't know the answer to this question—I'm still struggling with how to answer it (although I've come to a current conclusion).
Background
You may not know this: I was recently (April) laid off from my company of 12 years. I'd known this was coming (was welcoming it, actually) and had been interviewing with a fair amount of success. But there was something nagging me in the back of my brain that said it was time to do something different. Reinvent myself, strike out on my own, take all that I've done and think about the problem from a different angle.
So I put things in motion so that when the day came (April 19th), I was ready to go the very next day. On April 20th, North Shore Nomads, LLC became legal, I started snapping up domain names, drafted a dozen different versions of a business plan, interviewed banks, realtors and brokers, joined the local chamber of commerce, got a cool logo, continued networking, talked with building owners and got things going.
And ordered business cards.
The Problem
What to put on those business cards? Is this a small business or maybe a startup? Am I an owner, a founder or an entrepreneur?
I'm taking an idea, finding that others have done similar things in other cities and bringing my vision of this idea to light in my own area. Sounds very similar to the example offered up on wikipedia for entrepreneur:
Entrepreneurs tend to identify a market opportunity and exploit it by organizing their resources effectively to accomplish an outcome that changes existing interactions within a given sector.(emphasis added)
Since what I'm doing is a new twist on an old thing, I think that makes me an entrepreneur.
And for the moment (or until the cards need to be reordered), I'm the Owner.
