A Third Post-College Option
There is a secular trend going on, in which launching a start-up is a more common thing to do. It used to be there were two things you could do after college: go to grad school or get a job. Soon, I think there will be three things: go to grad school, get a job, or start your own company. I suspect this will be one of these economic transformations on the scale of the industrial revolution.”
It was very hard to choose which quote I wanted to highlight from this article. It is a very good article.
Here’s a couple more I couldn’t resist:
Why Some Startups Fail
The way [startups] die is they run out of money. So what could cause them to run out of money? They can either not make something people want or they can be bad at selling it. Sometimes, they’re just bad at selling. But most of the time, start-ups fail for the same reasons restaurants do: Their food is bad.
How Small Big Ideas Were
I think people underestimate how small big ideas were when they first got started. Microsoft’s first product was an implementation of the BASIC programming language for a machine called Altair. There were probably a few thousand users, total. If those guys had presented that idea on Demo Day, investors would have laughed at them. But it turns out, everything has some adjacent territory, if you’re energetic enough. It’s OK to start out with a small idea. People are bad at looking at seeds and guessing what size tree will grow out of them.
The Best Were Bad Ideas
The very best ideas usually seem like bad ideas at first. Google seemed like a bad idea. There were already several other search engines, some of which were operated by public companies. Who needed another? And Facebook? When I first heard about Facebook, it was for college students, who don’t have any money. And what do they do there? Waste time looking at one another’s profiles. That seemed like the stupidest company ever. I’m glad no one gave me an opportunity to turn it down.
