I would guess that the "successful entrepreneurs" category is sufficiently diverse to resist pigeon holing. I'm personally not a fan of anything that implies that you have to jump into a fast and loose market right out of high school to become an entrepreneur.
I'd wager there are plenty of folks that got fed up with their jobs after reading any number of self-help rags-to-riches articles or books and went on to have successful self-employed careers, some of which probably ended up in the millions of dollars.
Maybe it's because I'm corporately employed, thirty, sick of the grind and working to get out, but the "this is who I am; this is what works, and if you're not this, then you can't get it anywhere else" implication rubs me the wrong way.
On a different note, I can tell how little I've replied to this sort of article over the years by how many times I had to spell check entrepreneur (got it that time. boom. little victories, amirite?)
[edit: I also want to say that this isn't an attempt to try and slam the OP. Seriously, congrats on your success so far, and I hope you do just as well and better in the future. I just think there are a lot of paths and destinations in success, and even the cliche market of motivational memoirs and self-help guides can kick someone in the ass occasionally and get them to make the move they need to.]
> The average age of first-time entrepreneurs in all industries is 43; in tech industries, the average age is 39. Only 16 percent of the fastest-growing and most successful companies in the United States had venture investors. 11 percent had revenues of more than a million dollars.
According to the US census bureau, about half a million new firms are established each year (where a new firm is defined as having at least 1 employee on payroll, so this doesn't count everyone starting a website in their spare time). 16%, 11%, these are of big numbers, bigger than the couple dozen companies you might read about on TechCrunch each year.
> The average age of first-time entrepreneurs in all industries is 43; in tech industries, the average age is 39.
This obviously doesn't mention how successful those older entrepreneurs go on to be.
I'd like to know if there is a significant difference in the success rates of tech companies started by 18 year olds and 28 year olds. Does it actually make empirical sense to start a company when you're 18, or do those 10 years of working drastically improve your chances such that you should hold off?
I totally agree, and I think I didn't get the main point I was trying to make across clearly. It doesn't matter if you do my path, or your path, or the hundreds of thousands of other paths that people take for themselves, some people find their entrepreneurial spirit in other ways and after longer periods of time. You can be in your shoes, or my shoes, but the point I was trying to make is it's usually not a play by play post on how to make x that gets people motivated, it's exactly what you're talking about, being fed up or just wanting to do something different and for yourself.
I'd wager there are plenty of folks that got fed up with their jobs after reading any number of self-help rags-to-riches articles or books and went on to have successful self-employed careers, some of which probably ended up in the millions of dollars.
Maybe it's because I'm corporately employed, thirty, sick of the grind and working to get out, but the "this is who I am; this is what works, and if you're not this, then you can't get it anywhere else" implication rubs me the wrong way.
On a different note, I can tell how little I've replied to this sort of article over the years by how many times I had to spell check entrepreneur (got it that time. boom. little victories, amirite?)
[edit: I also want to say that this isn't an attempt to try and slam the OP. Seriously, congrats on your success so far, and I hope you do just as well and better in the future. I just think there are a lot of paths and destinations in success, and even the cliche market of motivational memoirs and self-help guides can kick someone in the ass occasionally and get them to make the move they need to.]