National Entrepreneurs’ Day – How did You Celebrate This Year?

You didn’t.  Because there is no National Entrepreneurs’ Day.  Mothers, fathers, grandparents, and even love (Valentine’s Day) rightly have days to recognize how important they are to us, but currently there is no day set aside to honor the contributions entrepreneurs have made in our society. Now a couple of creative young entrepreneurs are out to change that.  David Hauser and Siamak Taghaddos, founders of Grasshopper Group, have created a movement to get President Barack Obama to declare March 20^th, 2011 as the first National Entrepreneurs’ Day, and they’re using a medium close to the President’s heart to do it – the Internet.  Their site, EntrepreneursDay.org, taps into the power of Twitter to spread the word and reach their goal of 1,000,000 “signatures.”

So what’s this movement all about?  According to the organizers, it’s about what we entrepreneurs have always known: Entrepreneurs are the true drivers of the economy and the ones who will take the doom and gloom we hear from so called economic “experts” every day on the news and turn it around.  We’re the ones who either don’t pay any attention to the media and others claiming everything is so, so terrible, or hear them out then do our thing anyway.  From building and leasing real estate and engaging professional firms to buying materials and supplies, and of course adding jobs, entrepreneurs collectively keep our economy driving forward.  Siamak Taghaddos says, “Entrepreneurs are America’s real ‘bailout’,” and he’s absolutely right.

So should we have a day recognizing entrepreneurs?  Of course we should.  Other countries acknowledge the contributions of entrepreneurs with their own Entrepreneur Days.  Even China does so!  It seems strange that the most entrepreneurial country in the world doesn’t do the same.  After all, the entrepreneurial spirit is what made the U.S. possible.  Our founding fathers were full of entrepreneurial qualities, like the need to be independent, an ability to think outside the box, and a will to buck the system.  Let’s give that spirit its due and get behind the push for National Entrepreneurs’ Day.

We recently received an update from the Grasshopper team, as follows: Great news! There was so much buzz and excitement around Entrepreneurs’ Day in the first week, the president of The Kaufman Foundation gave us a call.  Kaufman said they heard about this from over 80 different people, and so they had to reach out!  They want to make “National Entrepreneurs’ Day” the first day of their National Entrepreneur Week (which has become very  big).  They want to keep it exactly as it is now (i.e. not brand it to be a Kaufman sponsored day), but have it be the “Launch Party” for the week.  It’s very exciting, and with Kaufman’s help if we can get a ton more signatures we can really get this in front of the right people!

At the time of this writing, only about a week after its launch, the site has nearly 1,500 supporters, and it’s growing fast.  Some of the more prominent supporters are Pat Condon, founder of Rackspace, Noah Everett, founder of TwitPic, 37Signals founder and author, Jason Fried, and Dharmesh Shah, the founder of HubSpot.  Of course the list is huge, but that’s a few.  Now it’s your turn.  Head over to EntrepreneursDay.org and join the cause.  It’s a quick and painless signup with your Twitter account, and you just might get some recognition too.  And you’ll know you were part of history next March, when you hear people saying, “Happy Entrepreneurs’ Day!”