Is 30 “Too Young” to Start a Business?

The article actually quotes a study that says most highly successful entrepreneurs worked for three or more years in a large multi-national business before leaving to start their own companies in their 30s.

I’m not sure whether to laugh or cry. My heroes, guys like Dell, Gates, and Zuckerberg, didn’t even wait to graduate college. But the study authors (and by extension, HBR) are saying that you should go to work for The Man for 10 years to learn how to:

• • 1. Structure operations and process in your business
    2. Manage people in an organization
    3. Build a strong company culture

Sure these are important lessons … but they can be learned anywhere!

I apply these rules to my business, and I’ve never worked at a Fortune 500 anything. The lessons of efficiency, delegation, operations and process can be learned anywhere.

In fact, the most proficient person I know in these skills is my wife. Where did she learn them? Working for a tiny newspaper during college, and six months at an even smaller bakery as a pastry chef! She’s a master at making simple processes that propel a company forward.

Meanwhile, multinationals continue to suck the life out of entrepreneurs. After a few years in the comfy cubicle of a Fortune 500 company, would-be entrepreneurs will have a hard time adjusting to the realities of life at a startup.

If you have learned to rely on million-dollar marketing departments, armies of IT people, and pools of secretaries and travel agents, you are in for a big start-up surprise. Starting a company is messy and I’m not entirely sure that working for a Fortune 500 company equips you to deal with messy.

So quit while you can. If you are 24 and working for The Man, your time is almost up. My experience suggests that waiting until you are 34 or 44 almost guarantees that you will not build a company of your own. You will become complacent and weak. You will delay and postpone and equivocate until you are stuck in your job for good.

Worse, you will likely spend your way into financial bondage: The economic weight of your mortgage, your kids and all the consumerism of modern life will weld your butt to a desk chair. Life at 30 is a LOT more expensive than life at 20 and a steady income sure seems easy.

Sure, there are some tough lessons a youngster will learn. Zuckerberg, Parker, Dell and Gates all got knocked around a bit. But the billionaire boys club is not made of people who waited until 30 to find their passion for work.

If entrepreneurship is for you, you’ll know it by the time you’re 20. But it can be forgotten, too. So act on the urge. Act soon. And act while you are young. When you do, don’t even THINK about subscribing to the Harvard Business Review. Clearly, the writers there are still working for The Man.

Dedicated to your (youthful) profits,

David