Starting a business right out of college has challenges — being light on experience and low on cash come immediately to mind.
But it offers a very important advantage. These young entrepreneurs have very low personal overhead.
Typically my MBA students and other older entrepreneurs we work with have a mortgage, car payments, tuition, and so forth to pay every month. When they start a business this personal overhead, in effect, becomes part of the overall overhead of their business. To break even they have to cover not only the costs of the business, but their own monthly expenses, as well.
On the other hand, my undergraduate students don’t bring much personal overhead to their new start-ups. They are used to living on ramen noodles and sleeping on couches. Because their monthly personal expenses are so low, the breakeven point of the business (when it can cover business expenses and cover the salary the entrepreneur’s needs to get by) is much, much lower than their older competitors. This makes getting cashflow positive a much easier task, thus increasing the odds that they will survive the trials of starting the venture.
Erin Blaskie offers her views of the pros and cons of starting a business right out of college in an article at Business on Main.
I completely agree with this post. I was very fortunate to start my business with school and I know if I had started it now, even a few months out of school, it would be a much harder road. There are just so many benefits to starting a business in school. I recently wrote a blog post on this same topic titled ‘Six Reasons to Start a Business while in School’ which hits on this very same topic
http://jakejorgovan.com/2011/02/26/six-reasons-to-start-a-business-while-in-school/
I agree with you, when you are older and have more responsibilities it is harder to get yourself into new things such as new business!
Thank you, Jeff, for giving us another reason to value our young entrepreneurs. As I mentioned in a previous comment, I work with the Campaign for Free Enterprise, a project of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. America desperately needs stable businesses and the jobs they create, and we believe that young entrepreneurs have the potential to create innovative and meaningful businesses. That is why the Chamber partners with Our Time, a non-profit organization that unifies young business minds and helps advance their entrepreneurial dreams. It is so important that schools offer students the ability to learn more about entrepreneurship and business, and we sincerely thank you for all that you do to advance this cause.
-Hilary,
http://www.freeenterprise.com
http://www.facebook.com/AmericanFreeEnterprise
I think that there no such thing as small responsibility or big responsibility. you are either responsible or not.But starting something new is always an adventure so you are little more cautious perhaps.