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.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Unemployment Increases in September (hsh.com)
• Successful Marketing Requires Behavior Change (myventurepad.com)

I was just thinking about the things that really fire up young entrepreneurs these days and decided to pen down a few. There are quite a few things that certainly warm my heart as a gen y entrepreneur and I don’t think it much different with others that fall into this category. What gets a young entrepreneur going? What’s the young entrepreneur’s kryptonite? I decided to get on Twitter, Facebook and some other social networks and find out if other people’s reasoning was similar to mine and most of the replies I got were pretty much the same.

Tech savvy people and environment: The millennial entrepreneur, actually, the typical gen y-er is well vast in most things tech related. These days most young people are walking around with cool gadgets and working daily tasks with tools that the older population are probably not so familiar with. The typical gen y entrepreneur believes he/she will relate easily with a tech savvy person and they will have things in common, so they are easily drawn to each other. Technology drives business in the world we currently live in, so when we discover people who appreciate it as much as we do, we immediately feel this North pole-South pole attraction.

Socially mindful people and environment: So New media and social networking is the big thing on the internet now and gen y-ers are in the middle of it all. This generation grew up in the middle of the buzz so it’s sort of customary for us to carry on with our lives on these channels. If you utilize these social media and just carry on with these tools, we definitely have a soft spot for you.

Those who carry around Tim Ferriss’ “The 4-hour workweek”: It’s just the way it is. I get a lot of stick from people when I say the typical gen y entrepreneur would rather have his day very short and chill for the rest of it than wake up at 7a.m and be at work till 6p.m. I am not saying millennial entrepreneurs are lazy, but we kind of think people like Markus Frind rock! I mean the lad works 1hr/ day and his company’s average annual revenue is $10million. These are the sort of people we draw inspiration from, so if you are down with these methods, then we are down with you.

Cheap stuff: I know everyone likes being prudent with funds, but millennials are especially careful. Young entrepreneurs are very financially intelligent and have grown up reading books and blogs detailing how to retire rich and how to stay away from spending money on things they can get for free. The typical millennial entrepreneur is not always keen to sign up for Adwords, he/she will much rather look for channels where they won’t have to spend a dime. Here are some things you will see:  (a)We will create a Facebook fan page and invite all our friends to join, then ask these friends to invite their other friends and so forth. We will then send message after message until we reach out to enough people. (b) We will get on Twitter and make so much noise that we are hard to ignore…the point of the whole thing.  (c.) We will walk up to people on the streets and try to charm these innocent people into patronizing us and our service. E.t.c.

Believe it or not, we will rather go through all these stressful situations than shell out hard earned bills. It’s just the way we are wired; cheap stuff puts a smile on our faces.

Independence: In case you didn’t know, gen y entrepreneurs don’t like being told what to do without having us understand why we are doing it. There’s a difference between being stubborn and being genuinely inquisitive. Most gen y entrepreneurs are the latter. I personally like to take advice from people especially those who are more experienced in my field, after all they have been through what I am currently going through, so I would expect them to know more. However, millennial entrepreneurs don’t derive joy from just the monetary reward of doing something, we get our thrill from learning something new and understanding why we are having to do what we do. While we do take advice and other people’s opinions, we are usually self-directed and we like to call the shots.

The smart and the Innovative: Gen Y entrepreneurs are suckers for new information! If you are one of those with something novel to share, you will get us going. I like listening to people, I believe everyone has something good to share and I find myself constantly getting drawn to those people who think out of the box and whose concepts are somewhat controversial. I am sure this is not something only I suffer from. We like to learn, so if you have something innovative to say, you are a winner in our eyes.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Poll Result: Most Popular Social Networking Tools for Online … (jonggunlee.tistory.com)
• Why Do People Use Online Social Networks : Internet Marketing … (jonggunlee.tistory.com)
• STUDY: Two-Thirds of Marketers Now Use Social Media (mashable.com)

Is there really a perfect time for one to start a business? I ask myself that question a lot and always seemed to come up with the same answer. I have never had to explain my reasoning until yesterday when this one guy asked me if it was a good time to start a T-shirt business. I have always looked at timing as a relative concept right from Physics 121 in college, and it’s no different these days. I believe the ideal time to do anything depends on where the individual is at that point in his life and career. I believe it takes you to know whether you are ready and able to do something or not. I am not of the school of thought that the economy largely dictates whether a start-up will survive or not.

I am currently reading a book called ‘The 4-hour workweek’ by Tim Ferriss and I came across a paragraph where he addressed this issue of timing. In his opinion, the timing is never right, infact it always sucks. He explained that the condition is never favorable to do anything and the world wouldn’t go out of its way to make your life any easier so you can launch your business. I do agree with him for the most part. I think it’s a much smarter decision to start and fix your errors along the course than wait until things are perfect because they will never be. Nothing is perfect and no time is right. There might be a period when things are a bit easier and you have a bit more money to spare to aid the start-up, but it doesn’t make it the perfect time.

Failure and mistakes are part of life in general and start-ups are no different. I am not sure one can avoid hardtimes because they “successfully picked the right time to start their business”. Personally, I tend to leap when I find myself satisfying these 3 conditions:

• Am I ready to pay the price? In life generally, there are always requirements for any action and there are consequences. So if I think I have what it takes and I am ready to deal with the repercussions, then why not. For example, If I am looking to start an online store where I sell sports memorabilia, I know that I will have to dedicate lots of hours to searching the web for these things, I know I will have to deal with slow sales at the beginning and so forth. If I list all these conditions and requirements and I know I can handle them, then I go for it.

• Can I realistically come up with the product? A lot of people come up with great ideas but in reality, anyone can conceive a great idea! What sets you apart is bringing the idea to life. Ofcourse I would like soccer shoes that somehow analyzes the position of the goal relative the the ball such that regardless of how I hit the ball it ends up in the back of the net. But can this be done? Probably not easily or accurately even if it could.

• Is there a market for it? If I do my market analysis and decide that there are indeed people who will use the product and that the business will be profitable, then I am on my way. This might be the most important condition in my opinion.

As long as I feel I can meet these conditions, I will go into work mode! But that’s just me. Is the timing ever right to start a business/build your start-up?

Related articles by Zemanta

• 5 Reasons to Start a Business in a Recession (usnews.com)
• Tim Ferriss Explains How To Start A Business and Live His Lifestyle (loiclemeur.com)