I have read many posts and heard alot of casts where people talk about quitting their day jobs or dropping off school to build their start-ups, that’s cool and all but make sure you take a minute or several minutes to rethink that decision. With the present state of the economy, I can see why anyone would give up on searching for a job and focus fully on their start-up. We’ve all read those fairytale stories of how Zuckerberg dropped out of Harvard to found Facebook, how Tim Ferriss quit his corporate job to build a successful business etc… but we never read those stories about how Joe dropped out of college to build a start-up but ended up homeless and hungry. The world we live in glorifies those success stories but forget the failures, not realizing how important it could be in teaching young Entrepreneurs to make the right decision.

If you feel as a young Entrepreneur that you have enough money to last you through your entire start-up process, then by all means follow your heart. The thing people don’t realize is that the money is not the only element of gain about having a job while chasing a start-up dream. If you know that your current job consumes too much of your time and you need to have a less demanding schedule, here’s a thought: find a part time job, a consulting gig at a start-up and keep a cashflow rather than giving it up all together. I always encourage Entrepreneurs to try associating themselves with other start-ups. If you can get a job at a start-up, try your best to! It’s a learning process that will prove immensely valuable. If you can’t get a full-time job there, truth is that a lot of start-ups outsource some aspects of their jobs – cease this opportunity, be active on their blogs and community, study their moves and make sure you learn something. It will come in handy. Here are some reasons why having a job helps your pursuit of start-up success:

1.) It keeps the money coming in. There’s always money floating around silicon valley and Investors are always looking for promising Entrepreneurs to invest in, BUT they are now very very careful with how much they spend. It’s more difficult to get money from investors these days if you are a first time Entrepreneur and the state of the economy can be blamed for that. Most Entrepreneurs have now turned to bootstrapping as the way of funding their business. How can you afford to bootstrap if you don’t have cashflow? even if you have money saved up somewhere, do you know how long that will last before you need more?

2.) It offers the opportunity to gain some useful experience. If you have a job whether in a start-up or not, you are bound to learn a thing or two that would be useful later on in your career as an Entrepreneur. You might find yourself learning how to manage other people, how to make the right business decisions, marketing and so forth. The possibilities are many. Now imagine if you were working at a start-up, you will see first hand what it takes to build/run a start-up. You are bound to learn important lessons, lessons like how to pitch investors, how to find the right work force, effective marketing strategy, carrying out customer tests etc..

3.) Having a job means Networking Opportunities. A lot of people associate Networking with having time to travel from event to event. On the job networking might be over-looked but there are many stories of people building relationships with co-workers, bosses or even clients and have gone on to build successful businesses with the help of these people. I can’t count how many ex-google employees, ex-paypal employees that have gone on to build start-ups that are performing better than okay at the moment. These people took advatage of the people they met while working at their old jobs and the results are obvious. So if you are a recent grad, it helps to atleast try looking for a job, rather than just focus fully on starting up a business.

4.) Having a Job means something to fall back on. Whether you like to hear this or not, most start-ups fail within the first year. I know every Entrepreneur believe it can’t be them, we all expect to succeed! After all we are the optimists and those investors are pessimists. But what if you do fail? what then? Having a job means something you can fall back on in this tough recession period where it’s more difficult to find a new job than it is for a camel to walk through the eye of a needle.

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Every start-up shares the same primary objective: Get lots of people to join my service/use my product. It’s always the same regardless of what industry you are in and the Entrepreneurs with the best networking skills are the ones who have the best ride. Networking is all about finding people who could be of help to you and reaching out to them. It’s really an art and if done early and effectively, your start-up might actually have a chance. Research shows that 80% of startups fail and shut shop within their first 6-12 months, as a new Entrepreneur you must find like minded people to interact with and learn from so your startup can perhaps be in that 20% that survives.

Networking for your start-up requires you as an Entrepreneur to be confident, vocal and able to relate with people. It’s about being able to convince people that you are good at what you do, that what you do is great and they should be interested in what you have to offer. Picking who to network with is a whole different subject and that depends on you and your business, but it’s important that you start networking early on and do it right. It raises awareness for your venture, it helps you build up a potential customer base, mentors and even potential investors.

Here are some idea on how you can network early and effectively

1.) Set up a temporary welcome page on the internet while building. Here’s an idea that alot of start-up have employed recently and it works like a charm. Instead on being offline and completely behind the scenes while building your start-up, how about letting people know about you during this time? how about giving people the gist behind your business and getting them excited about it? The trick is to set up your domain name, put up a page that welcomes people, tell them what you are building, when you will go live and offer an opt-in e-mailing list if they want to be updated with news about the startup. It will surprise you how many people sign-up, boosting your potential customer pool even before you launch.

2.) Go to the After parties of events you can’t afford. I watched a recent presentation by Kevin Rose at the FOWA ‘09 in London and this was one of the points he made that I could totally relate to. Kevin is a guy I completely respect, he’s very daring, does things people consider against the norm and it always works out for him. For those who don’t know him, Kevin is founder of Digg and wefollow. Like me, many young entrepreneur know that we should be interacting with the likes of Chris Sacca, Ashton Kutcher, Dave McClure, Ron Conway etc… but the only way we could get to reach and pitch these people is at start-up events or investor conferences. The problem is though, it could cost up to $5,000 to get in. Step up After party. They are cheaper, easier to get in (you can volunteer to help on the night) and are more relaxed. Just remember to have a demo of your startup handy. Visuals work better than words, ask Aaron Patzer.  After spending several hours per day for 6 months building Mint.com, he embarked on a networking campaign. He got turned down by virtually everyone until he pitched a partner at First Round Capital outside a Networking event in 2006.  “I had a server running on a laptop in the trunk of my car,” Patzer says. “He waited a couple of minutes. I ran out and got the laptop and fired up a demo.” The rest is history.

3.) Exploit the Social Media channels. With Twitter, Facebook, Vimeo and other social networks available these days, it’s easy to build a brand and build a following for it. Find people who can help you realize your start-up dreams and start connecting with them. Share information about your business, tell the world what’s new and what’s going on in your community. Follow/friend/interact with VCs, potential mentors, other entrepreneurs or anyone who indicates interest in your niche. In time, you will have a substantial network of people for your start-up. The means when you launch, you will lauch with lots of users versus no one if you are quiet during your building period.

4.) Foster relationships with Journalists and Media. Take the opportunity to build relationships with people that can put your start-up in the public eye. A lot of journalists and press people have blogs these days, are on twitter and it doesn’t harm to leave a comment here, retweet there and interact all over. By building a relationship with them you are improving your chances of getting a positive response when you ask for a favor. Take advantage of whatever you get; if you don’t shoot, you will not score.

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