My dad was given the opportunity to start a consulting company in his 20s, which he turned down because he felt he didn't know anything at the time about running a business. He did well for himself nonetheless, VP at a company, big house in the suburbs, a very secure life, but always regretted not taking the chance to build something for himself. There is more to life than a good salary and a secure job.
That said, I dislike how much the bubble around here paints the choice as a dichotomy: do a startup right after school or be a slave to Big Corps forever.
The VC world likes em young, and that's fine for them. But statistically, founders of such companies probably don't come out ahead, financially, relative to those who pursue say an MBA and a big corp job. However, there are a lot of people who take the experience and contacts from Big Corps to start a business. Both companies where I worked as an engineer were founded by guys in their late 30's or early 40's after developing a base of experience in industry. They had revenue from almost day one, they had the experience to identify niches that could make them money. They're not looking at $500m exits selling to Yahoo, but they've made a lot of money and had an a priori reasonable expectation of doing so.
I'd also like to point out another thing: if you're thinking about starting a business right out of school, look at Peter Theil--what he did instead of what he says. Theil took his double Stanford degrees to Wall Street and made a bunch of money and contacts before he co-founded Paypal (at 31). If you want to start a business, that's a good way to go about doing it.
That said, I dislike how much the bubble around here paints the choice as a dichotomy: do a startup right after school or be a slave to Big Corps forever.
The VC world likes em young, and that's fine for them. But statistically, founders of such companies probably don't come out ahead, financially, relative to those who pursue say an MBA and a big corp job. However, there are a lot of people who take the experience and contacts from Big Corps to start a business. Both companies where I worked as an engineer were founded by guys in their late 30's or early 40's after developing a base of experience in industry. They had revenue from almost day one, they had the experience to identify niches that could make them money. They're not looking at $500m exits selling to Yahoo, but they've made a lot of money and had an a priori reasonable expectation of doing so.
I'd also like to point out another thing: if you're thinking about starting a business right out of school, look at Peter Theil--what he did instead of what he says. Theil took his double Stanford degrees to Wall Street and made a bunch of money and contacts before he co-founded Paypal (at 31). If you want to start a business, that's a good way to go about doing it.