It’s Happening: The Rise of the Young Entrepreneur

I’m sick and tired of people telling young entrepreneurs that they “aren’t in any position to teach because they haven’t done anything yet.”

Blah..Blah..Rah..Rah..

Who are these people who preach this nonsense? From my experiences, they are usually in their late thirties to early fifties. They are currently working 9 to 5 jobs at companies they have been at for many years, and they are very curious about entrepreneurship but they always seem to get mad when they see a young entrepreneur actually running a business.

I’ve been exposed to these sorts of people every since becoming an entrepreneur. I tell them the same thing every time they try to proselytize me with their upside-down views on entrepreneurship.

I say “Sure, many of us aren’t millionaires and we certainly don’t have all the clients it the world, but that’s not what it’s all about. It’s about learning as we go along. It’s about embracing the unknown and not being scared to take risks. It’s about sharing our insights, experiences, failures, and successes with others in an effort to educate and motivate them to push forward with their business. So what if we don’t have MBAs. So what if we haven’t been running companies for three decades. That’s not what it’s all about.”

I hate to say it, but I think that a lot of the older generation’s animosity and skepticism towards us young entrepreneurs stems from the uncanny advances that we have been making throughout the business world. We have been moving at a rate faster than ever before.

For many, the rise of the young entrepreneur may be an uncomfortable experience. I guess it can be a hard thing to swallow for some when they see a 21 year-old kid who quits college and is offered 1 billion dollars for a company he started two years ago. Or when they see another 18 year-old create a photo-sharing company that disrupts the entire online photo industry.

Well, my friends, we are experiencing a new shift in the way business is done. The young entrepreneur is at the forefront of this new paradigm. No longer is the “young” person only looked upon as a student who is fed information. The roles are changing.

Time and time again students are entering “entrepreneurship” masters of business administration courses in college where they are being taught theoretical bullshit from adjunct professors who have never even started a business in their lifetime. And guess what? The young entrepreneurs sitting in that class who have been running their startups for the past three years are sitting with smirks on their faces because they know that the professor doesn’t have a clue what he’s talking about.

All joking aside, I am confident that at the rate young entrepreneurship is growing and the experiences we young entrepreneurs are gaining through starting companies, there will be more students in this country who are more qualified to speak about entrepreneurship than there are professors.

Look at what’s happening right now: colleges are in a rat race attempting to create entrepreneurship programs. Most colleges in the country don’t even have entrepreneurship programs, let alone qualified professors with real experiences who can properly educate the students.

The bottom line is this: we aren’t living in a time (was there ever a time?) where entrepreneurship can be taught by keeping our heads glued in books and studying for exams. That teaches little to nothing. Entrepreneurship is learned by actually experiencing it, by actually starting a company and working at it every single day. Practice will always trump theory.

So for all older and purportedly “more experienced” people out there who continue to feel that young entrepreneurs have no right talking about entrepreneurship and/or teaching others about it, you need to snap out of it. You’re in for a rude awakening. To underestimate power and potential of us young entrepreneurs, you are doing yourself a disservice.

And if you still aren’t convinced that us young entrepreneurs are changing the course of business and disrupting sectors left and right, then sit back, relax, and take a nap. When you awake in a few years, I promise, you won’t know what to do with yourself.

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