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Asking whether you'll jump or not, is always the wrong question. If you're asking yourself that question, you're probably not an entrepreneur. Most entreprene

Asking whether you'll jump or not, is always the wrong question. If you're asking yourself that question, you're probably not an entrepreneur. Most entrepreneurs that are successful have multiple previous startups and have always made the jump early and frequently (Jobs and Wozniak with their illegal long distance calling hack, Zuckerberg with a collaborative fitering music sharing app in high school, Aaron (Mint.com) with his multiple startups back in college, etc). Doing every progressive experience gets you used to doing another startup and making you comfortable for the jump. Doing a startup isn't like rolling the dice and seeing if you can win the lottery, it's more of a compulsion. There was a blog entry : http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2008/04/ten-questions-a.html http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2008/04/ten-questions-a.html "Is there an ideal age for an entrepreneur? No, although most start at a young age since they don't belong in big companies. But once an entrepreneur always an entrepreneur. We've got one entrepreneur in our portfolio who is approaching 60 and working on his fourth company."

gruseom 18y ago
Woz wasn't an entrepreneur in this sense. He was a hacker who lived for computers and planned to work at HP his entire career.
- jaspertheghost 18y ago
  Sure, but he was always an inveterate tinkerer. Much like the passage described below: http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/b/bennis-genius.html http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/b/bennis-genius.html Many of the people in our Great Groups are tinkerers--the kind of people who, as children, took the family television apart and tried to put it together again. They are people willing to spend thousands of hours finding out how things work, including things that don't yet exist. There's a joke about engineers that captures the spirit of many participants in creative collaborations. An engineer meets a frog who offers the engineer anything he wants if he will kiss the frog. "No," says the engineer. "Come on," says the frog. "Kiss me, and I'll turn into a beautiful woman." "Nah," says the engineer. "I don't have time for a girlfriend ...but a talking frog, that's really neat. " Members of Great Groups don't fear technology, they embrace it. And they all think that creating the future is really neat.
Skeletor 18y ago
Everyone has to do their first start-up at some point. Just because you haven't done a start-up failed or otherwise by the time you are 30, doesn't mean that you won't ever do one. I think in this economy a lot of people who haven't previously done a start-up full time are finding that an option. I definitely found that was the case for me.

gruseom 18y ago

Woz wasn't an entrepreneur in this sense. He was a hacker who lived for computers and planned to work at HP his entire career.

jaspertheghost 18y ago
Sure, but he was always an inveterate tinkerer. Much like the passage described below: http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/b/bennis-genius.html http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/b/bennis-genius.html Many of the people in our Great Groups are tinkerers--the kind of people who, as children, took the family television apart and tried to put it together again. They are people willing to spend thousands of hours finding out how things work, including things that don't yet exist. There's a joke about engineers that captures the spirit of many participants in creative collaborations. An engineer meets a frog who offers the engineer anything he wants if he will kiss the frog. "No," says the engineer. "Come on," says the frog. "Kiss me, and I'll turn into a beautiful woman." "Nah," says the engineer. "I don't have time for a girlfriend ...but a talking frog, that's really neat. " Members of Great Groups don't fear technology, they embrace it. And they all think that creating the future is really neat.

Skeletor 18y ago

Everyone has to do their first start-up at some point. Just because you haven't done a start-up failed or otherwise by the time you are 30, doesn't mean that you won't ever do one. I think in this economy a lot of people who haven't previously done a start-up full time are finding that an option. I definitely found that was the case for me.