Yeah, About That...

When I first ran across the (viral?) story about the self-proclaimed “Valedictorian” who intentionally failed all of his classes and dropped out of school two weeks before graduation to become an entrepreneur I’ll admit I was annoyed for more than just professional reasons. To be sure, as an instructor in the business college I find the assertions that all education is a waste of time and all one needs to be successful in life is to believe in themselves to be arrogant, self-serving intellectual drivel. I’ve seen too many young philosophers who believe that they already know more than they could possibly learn in school; they generally skip lectures a lot and end up grubbing for grades. But I’ve also worked with (and occasionally for) a large number of actual entrepreneurs over the years, and what this unteachable young genius is saying also fails to match up with the observable facts…

To begin with, the statistics on entrepreneurial start-ups are fairly conclusive: 90% of them fail before ever breaking even, regardless of the confidence or self-actualization of the entrepreneur starting them, or even of how many previous times the same individual was successful. This is not to say that no one has ever gotten things to work on the first go – that’s not how statistics work – but it does mean that even people who are relatively good at this process will need more than optimism and commitment to their ideals if they plan to succeed. They will need a viable business concept – not just a product of service that people will actually want to purchase, but one that can generate enough revenue to meet expenses when they do. I’ve seen too many projects that came to grief because the person or persons in charge never actually figured out how they would earn money doing it, and if you go on the “unfunded” page of any of the crowdfunding sites you can find dozens more…

They will need a plan. I’ve already spent a lot of time on this site talking about business plans, and why they are important, including the boring parts that nobody ever wants to learn about, let alone do. A business plan is great for showing to potential investors, including friends and family, and is absolutely critical if you want to get loans or grants, including the SBA loans and grants for which I used to help people apply. But the most important reason for doing one is for yourself; if you can’t articulate everything you plan to do, in plain language, you have no realistic chance of doing it. That goes double for the vision statement (which lays out what you are trying to do) and the mission statement (which details how you intend to accomplish your vision) – your investors may or may not want to see it, but if you can’t explain these things you’re not likely to have any…

They will need money. I’m not saying that no one has ever started an entrepreneurial company in their garage or their parent’s basement and gone on to build a wildly successful company – Kevin Plank of Under Armour, Jeff Bezos of Amazon, and Jobs and Wozniak (who need no introduction) are all proof of that. But for every Steve Jobs there are literally thousands of people who are still living in their parent’s basement after seven or eight tries, unable to earn enough to pay for lunch, let alone that “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” mansion they thought would be theirs within a year or two. It’s possible that the author of this supposed think-piece has actually figured out what he plans to do and how he plans to do it, but I can’t help thinking that it would have been much more interesting to hear about that, rather than some half-baked, derivative philosophy…

And it would have been far more impressive to actually start that wildly successful new venture and then write about how throwing away three or more years of your life and tens of thousands of dollars was actually a brilliant and brave decision…