Still in debt [after his first start-up company failed], Mr. Gerber considered his career options. His mother kept encouraging him to get a “real” job, the kind that comes with an office and a boss. But, using the last $700 in his bank account, he decided to start another company instead.
With the new company, called Sizzle It, Mr. Gerber vowed to find a niche, reduce overhead and generally be more frugal. The company, which specializes in short promotional videos, was profitable the first year, he says.
Mr. Gerber, now 27, isn’t a millionaire, but he’s paid off his loans and doesn’t have to live with his parents (he rents an apartment in Hoboken, N.J.). And he thinks his experience can help other young people who face a daunting unemployment rate.
In October, Mr. Gerber started the Young Entrepreneur Council “to create a shift from a résumé-driven society to one where people create their own jobs,” he says. “The jobs are going to come from the entrepreneurial level.”
“The jobs are going to come from the entrepreneurial level.â€
Mr. Gerber must realize that, in modern America, such a philosophy conflicts with affirmative action. It’s an unfair POV. Perhaps you could change it to:
“The jobs are going to come from the government level.â€
It’s great he was able to do this. But not everyone has what it takes to start a business and make a decent living at it. FAR more businesses fail than succeed.
Many entrepreneurs only succeed with their third or fourth business.
If you remove restaurants — of which 95% eventually fail, most within two years — from the equation, then something like half of all businesses make it to five years, and of those that do, 85% or so make it at least another decade beyond that.
The vast majority of net job creation in America has, for decades, come from small and medium business, and a rather substantial chunk of that comes from start-ups.
A new business may create four, or seventeen, jobs, but if they survive they’re unlikely ever to create new jobs at the same rate they did on start-up.
I say kudos to these guys. I read a great book about becoming an entrepreneur called “Effortless Entrepreneur.” I was pretty much ready to quit my day job right there, but I didn’t. However, I am in the process of starting a business.
Most people are sick of the system, being minions controlled by some corporate (or non-profit) overlord, only to eek out a yearly raise while your best ideas and work go to pay somebody else lots of money. I hope lots of people start their own businesses and start competing with the lazy, bailed out, big guys.
Why do you think the big guys are so fond of ever-increasing and ever-more-burdensome regulations? Because they erect huge competitive barriers to start-ups and stifle the innovation that could render the big guys obsolete.
Big business entities make routine use of regulatory bodies like UL, ASTM, ROAS, TOSCA, REACH, GREEN GUARD, LEED and others to fashion barriers to competition. And the really big ones like GE, et al, take their roadshow to Washington with high paid consultants to get their pet innovations like CFL bulbs protected by legislative fiat.
But so far they have never been able to stop the guy or gal with the bright idea who finds a new way to add value to an everyday event. A nice is example is EZMeals
http://e-mealz.com/
A new way to approach an old chore without resorting to prepackaged food that people don’t like after awhile.
I absolutely agree that the big companies love big government. Those of the more liberal persuasion can’t seem to realize that government regulation favors the big boys (who can afford to comply) while squeezing out the little guys. And also, who got bailed out? Hint: it wasn’t small businesses!