Maybe you had this thought before – you have a sum of money and you wanted to grow it. You were wondering whether to start a business with this capital or to invest it instead.

The common perception is that business and investment go hand-in-hand and that they are akin to identical twins. Hence, some individuals can get confused about which path to take as though they are similar.

I have been an investor and an entrepreneur and I can tell you they are poles apart. A good investor is often not a good entrepreneur and vice versa. The choice should be so obvious that you should not even be in a dilemma. Let me explain the differences.

Borrowing Peter Thiel’s terms of definite optimists and indefinite optimists (from his book Zero to One).

As definite optimists, entrepreneurs believe that they