THE JOB CATEGORY of entrepreneur, not-necessarily-rich men with access to capital who enlisted other men to create a business out of nothing, came into being at the same time as America, itself a business conjured out of nothing. The organizers of the Virginia Companies, which funded the first colonies in the 1600s, were early entrepreneurs. But when the word entered English in the 1800s, entrepreneur was a synonym for showman or impresario, a creator and promoter of spectacles. Right around the time Tocqueville arrived and the Gold Rush happened, its meaning expanded to encompass people
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