Entrepreneur Specialization

Of the 8 Career Skills, choose 4 to get a free rank. Of the 4 Specialization Skills, choose 2 to get a free rank.

Colonist Career Skills: Charm, Deception, Knowledge (Core Worlds), Knowledge (Education), Knowledge (Lore), Leadership, Negotiation and Streetwise

Entrepreneur Specialization Skills: Discipline, Knowledge (Education), Knowledge (Underworld) and Negotiation

Entrepreneurs know that there is only one thing worth investing in—the future. Entrepreneurs are not unlike explorers in the world of business; they want to be the first to open up new markets, to revolutionize industrial practices, or to create new service industries people hadn't realized they needed, but once sampled, cannot live without.

While the Entrepreneur is willing to bully, charm, or mislead others to achieve his ends, he prefers to rely on negotiations, bringing to bear facts, graphs, and projections for the future. In this way the Entrepreneur is similar to the Scholar. However, unlike Scholars, the Entrepreneur operates under the assumption that every problem can be overcome with a big enough credit stick.

Entrepreneurs may be free with their money, but they are never wasteful, and they are always looking for ways to cut costs, even if it skirts regulations. Most savvy businesspeople know that if one only plays by the rules, then one can only ever be as successful as the rules allow. Since the rules are usually written by the established corporations the Entrepreneur competes against, he believes the rules exist solely as a means to restrict progress, stifle innovation, and suppress competition. In short, rules were made to be broken. Even the most upstanding businessperson occasionally contracts operatives for industrial espionage or corporate intelligence gathering, and even if he morally objects to that behavior, he needs to know how to defend against it.

It is said that a sucker is born every second, and the Entrepreneur takes great pains to make certain he is never one of them. In all of his dealings, the Entrepreneur must remain vigilant against conversational traps laid by opponents during delicate negotiations. Preparedness is always a part of the plan, so that risk is mitigated and no circumstances result in absolute failure.

Every group can benefit from counting an Entrepreneur among its number. Their ability to negotiate a favorable deal in any number of circumstances, and the resources at their disposal, make Entrepreneurs invaluable members of the team. They make excellent leaders, and any party who allows an Entrepreneur to negotiate on its behalf will be pleased with the results. The Entrepreneur can also act as team quartermaster, outfitting the group with specialized, hard-to-find equipment with little notice, and both his pool of contacts and credit pouch are deep enough to keep the party informed on almost any subject.

Potential Backgrounds

The Opportunist: Entrepreneurs are seldom welcome in a colony. Many Entrepreneurs see some aspect of a colony's success—a profitable mine, a good location for trade, or a local product that could generate off-world demand—as their chance to get rich quickly. Since Entrepreneurs work in the world of finance, investments, and asset acquisition, most locals have a hard time following what they do and distrust them as a result. That many Entrepreneurs don't have the locals' best interests at heart doesn't help the situation.

The Grizzled Settler: Entrepreneurs may have become colonists hoping to establish thriving businesses (or even full corporations) "from the ground up" in a new colony. They spent countless credits on their enterprise, only to see it fail due to disasters and ruinous cost overruns beyond their control. Now they're left with nothing, stranded in a colony they've come to loathe.

The Fugitive: An Entrepreneur may be a fugitive after engineering a major scam or fraud in some of the large galactic markets. He could have made millions of credits before the authorities discovered his crimes. His accounts frozen, his assets stripped, he fled to the furthest colony he could find before he could be arrested.

The Local Leader: An Entrepreneur may have developed his love for wealth and desire for quick riches as a prospector. Precious metals and gems are always in demand, as are any number of gases and liquids used in industrial processes for creating ships, droids, weapons, and machinery. Finding a rich pocket of Tibanna gas or a lode of Corusca gems is a surefire way to amass enough wealth to buy a retirement island on a resort world. Perhaps the character managed to make some initial money, and has now used it to invest in his continued success and prosperity.

The Idealist: Entrepreneurs might at first glance seem an unlikely sort to have truly altruistic motives, but the truth is that helping people and making money can go hand in hand, provided one keeps an open mind. An idealist Entrepreneur might see an economically depressed settlement not as an unfortunate inevitability, but rather as an opportunity for investment nobody else has identified yet. For instance, while taking a stake in a failing space station by installing new air recyclers might seem like a waste of money to some, a keen Entrepreneur with foresight could easily help an impoverished community become a hub for local hyperlane traffic—and, by opening up shop there, share in the profits that the flow of passing travelers brings in.