Entrepreneurship for our Generation

And you have to be alert. You have to keep up on the market, know who your competitors are and if they make a mistake, know how to capitalize on it.”

But Moshe added that above all else, “I think that it is very important for entrepreneurs to be okay with failure, because it’s there all the time. You fail and you have to stand up and keep on going.”

If that last point hasn’t scared prospective entrepreneurs off, then the next likely question one might ask is, “Where do I begin?”

During the discussion with Professor Kerr, he pointed out that a good place to start is through networking. “Success in entrepreneurship is as much who you know as what you know or how innovative you are. On two sides, it helps you with getting the resources you need to get your venture off the ground … and also, at the market interface, networking exposes you to different channels, new potential customers.

“All things together, it’s usually the well-connected person who wins the game versus the individual without connections.”

Kerr went on to explain how, in terms of lack of funding, there are also a variety of modest funding grants and loans offered by the government for young entrepreneurs (that is, if you can’t get funding from family, friends, the bank, etc). Moreover, the importance is pressed for those students who lack experience, to “weave (entrepreneurship) into their education and choice of part time employment, (to expose them) to the entrepreneurial landscape (as early as possible).”

“But still,” one could say, “the costs seem to high. Starting a business, running a business, nowadays only the big corporations can do that. How can I compete?”

New Age in DIY

This mindset would have been perfectly valid and common only ten years ago. For many, the costs of starting one’s own business, competing with the ‘big boys’ were staggering, not to mention the sheer amount of industry or legal knowledge one would need to obtain to ensure their business lasted past the first few years. But something arose this past decade, something which acted as a game-changer: the Internet Revolution.

It seems quaint to say this now, especially with how comfortable many Gen Nexters are with the Internet. But that’s the point! When one thinks about it, the Internet—and the Information Age it helped foster—has completely democratized almost every aspect of starting a new venture. And for those Gen Nexter’s, currently in their 20s, they’re the first generation to grow up with it, to know how to use it intuitively.

So why pay huge sums of money to market one’s product or service on television or in newspapers, when one can do so for free (or next to free) online (e.g. Ebay or SparkFun) and in a much more targeted way?

Why shell out thousands in consultancy costs, when one can access reams of industry, legal, regulatory, pricing, logistical information, etc, for free online.

Why invest millions of dollars in owning manufacturing plants, warehouses, shipping fleets, etc, when one can organize online the outsourcing of a product’s complete production to foreign countries like China (e.g. Alibaba.com: business-to-business marketplace), have it stored in a nearby warehousing company, accept payments for products online (e.g. paypal.com), then deliver one’s products anywhere in the world (e.g. government or premium mail carriers)?

Even for those archetypal, DIY garage inventors, they can now download free design tools like Blender or Google’s SketchUp to create 3D renderings of their product, then purchase online the manufacturing equipment (which have fallen in price from the hundred thousands to a few thousand, e.g.