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What better measure of a generation than its approach to entrepreneurship?
Generation Y, born between 1977 and 1994, may well be on its way to becoming the most entrepreneurial generation in our nation's history -- and for very good reasons.
Those born during those years took their baby steps during our first true entrepreneurial decade, the 1980s; watched their parents "restructured" out of what were once lifetime corporate jobs; saw barriers to entry collapse as technology democratized the business start-up process; and enrolled in newly minted college entrepreneurship programs, which have increased sevenfold in the past six years.
No wonder that a recent study by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor shows that 18- to 24-year-olds in the U.S. are starting businesses at a faster rate than 35- to 44-year-olds. The college campus is now a fertile breeding ground for company builders.
"Forty percent or more of students who come into our undergraduate entrepreneurship program as freshmen already have a business," says Jeff Cornwall, the Massey Chair in Entrepreneurship at Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn. "It's a whole new world."
Serial entrepreneurs
The rising stars on Inc.'s "30 under 30" list for 2007 would most certainly agree. We've got a few high school startups and several more college-dorm-room launches. Some are already racking up revenue in the tens of millions, while others are just experiencing the first blush of success.But all of them are worth watching -- for the companies they're running today and for the ones they've yet to conceive of but will most surely start in the future. Because here's the thing about Gen Y entrepreneurs: They're lifers, or so they say. The majority of them plan to start more than one company in their lifetimes.
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That's true for our list, but that particular defining characteristic was also borne out by a recent survey, conducted by OPEN from American Express, which compared Generation Y and baby-boomer entrepreneurs. Fifty-nine percent of Gen Y company owners described themselves as serial entrepreneurs, compared with just 33% of baby boomers. Maybe that has something to do with their attitudes about risk: 72% of Gen Y'ers said they enjoy taking risks, while only 53% of older entrepreneurs are risk junkies.
Sure, it may still be pie in the sky. It's one thing to plan multiple companies but quite another to actually launch them, and it's typically far easier to take risks when you're 22 than when you're, say, 50 and saddled with a mortgage and your kid's college tuition. But the stated intention to live an entrepreneurial life -- and to start doing it before you're old enough to order a drink legally -- is part and parcel of Generation Y's confidence, independence and enthusiasm. And its impatience.
Who needs college?
Gen Y'ers are often so antsy, in fact, that it's not unusual for them to bail out of college to devote themselves to their businesses full time.Take Ben Kaufman, the CEO of Mophie, who enrolled in Champlain College in Burlington, Vt., because he was drawn to a program called BYOBiz (Bring Your Own Business). But when his iPod accessory company took off, so did Kaufman (for a year, anyway). Raj Lahoti felt compelled to do the same when things started cooking at Online Guru.
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They wouldn't be the first entrepreneurs to eschew the classroom for the start-up trenches, but that kind of defection may tell us something about entrepreneurship education.
"The old model was, go off and study liberal arts, and, when you're a junior, we'll give you an entrepreneurship course," Cornwall says. "Now, if I wait until junior year, I'll lose them. They want fulfillment and success, and they're not willing to wait 10 or 15 years. They want it today."
Continued: The digital generation
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