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Entrepreneurship is risky. Entrepreneurship is for the naïve. Entrepreneurship rarely succeeds. All of these assumptions make entrepreneurship sound like a bleak place only for the most risk-averse; the de facto position from many people is that corporate life is the way to go. But this conventional position is far from true. Building new companies is far more sensible than one may think.
With the likes of Apple, Microsoft, and Facebook, all the founders took that risk and created multi-billion dollar companies, all of them also dropped out of school. I am not saying dropping out of school is a wise decision by any means, but if we look at some of the top banks or law firms, we can see many layoffs occurred in the past few years. In the “safe” job, a lawyer, 430,000 students are planned to become new legal graduates between 2008-2018. The government estimates that 215,417 jobs for these attorneys will open. So, below half will even get a chance to step foot in their chosen field. In comparison, a recent study states that 56% of businesses started in 2004 were still in business in 2012, despite the downturn in the economy.
Maybe the most important thing about working at a startup is that people will enjoy what they do. It has been proven that “people who cultivate a positive mind-set perform better in the face of challenge – the happiness advantage.” With a world economy that is continuously pushing towards offshore production, high skill and low wage jobs, the risks of entrepreneurship look better than once thought.
Joining or starting a new company may not be right for everyone, but society should not push new graduates into a corporate-only mind set. So, lets take a lesson from Thomas Suarez and take that step towards entrepreneurship.
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