Gen Y wants to be the next great wave of entrepreneurs. One problem: We don’t know anything.
I read this article today about a recent poll of over 800 of my fellow millenials, which revealed that 54% of us either want to start a business or already have. That’s a lot of aspiring entrepreneurs, but the reasoning is easy to understand:
- We’ve watched our parents get laid off by the thousands. We know how quickly big corporations can turn on longtime employees in times of economic hardship. We don’t want to put our livelihoods in the hands of a global brand and a faceless board of directors.
- We can’t find work. The current recession has made it extremely difficult to find solid, well-paying careers in our fields of interest or expertise. Solution? Make our own jobs. “Freelance cultural anthropologist for hire!”
- Production is dead. Long live digital. Today’s successful businesses seem like they’d be easy to replicate. With the MyFaceTwiTubeSquares raking in billions without so much as a physical product, who needs to “make” anything anymore? I’m a social media digital brand consultant focused on user-end applications and value-driven content aggregation. Pay me now.
- Success is (seemingly) everywhere. Stories of enterprising young people skyrocketing to business leadership —and Scrooge McDuck-esque swimming pools of money— have been hard-wired into our brains, and we use their products everyday. Mark Zuckerberg became an overnight success off of a few all-nighters and some lines of code, right? Not right. But we all think we can, and should, be next.
Who can blame Gen Y for wanting to embrace the entrepreneurial spirit? We’re having trouble getting hired by other people, stories of digital entrepreneurship success are all around us, and the tools to create are literally at our fingertips everyday. But the actual stuff it takes to build a real, live, successful company— relentless perseverance, managerial know-how, and capital SWEET LORD THE CAPITAL… these things evade us.
- Gen Y has had it easy up until now. Everything was rec soccer, Fruit Roll-Ups, and MarioKart until it came time for us to get jobs. And as Occupy Wall Street can attest, that sucks. This recession is the first thing we’ve ever had to survive. We’re still learning the whole “never give up” thing, an essential part of any entrepreneur’s genetic makeup.
- We don’t know how to manage people yet. Gen Y hasn’t had the practical business experience required to get a start-up off the ground. And while the entrepreneurial playground is a great place to experiment and learn and fail and try again, we can’t afford the luxury of messing up because—
- We can’t get capital. Bottom line? Lenders aren’t lending these days. So aside from the three F’s (family, friends, and fools), we don’t have anyone to hit up for seed money to get these businesses off the ground. Not to mention the fact that most banks probably wouldn’t grant a small business loan to a 23-year-old whose strongest skill is “#IronicHashtagDesign.”
We’re still young. We’re looking for our unique path to success. I have no doubt that Gen Y’s sociability and penchant for technology will serve us well as we craft our collective economic future, but it’s a little early to call us a generation of entrepreneurs. As it stands right now, “aspiring entrepreneur” is kind of our only option other than “unemployed.” That’s a gross generalization, but you know what I mean.
The entrepreneurial spark is bright in Gen Y, but it will ultimately manifest itself not in the number of businesses we start, but in the way we eventually interact and work within our future companies. We value autonomy, transparency, and respect— and we’ve already seen these qualities manifest in the young start-ups that have found success with millenials. We may not all become entrepreneurs, but give us some time to ripen and we’ll be more entrepreneurial than any generation before us.
30-Day Challenge #7
