Some interesting stats on Entrepreneurs

Question

Entrepreneurs are supposed to be young mavericks who dropped out of school, invented something in a garage and cashed in big on it. But several studies show that this popular notion is false.

- Those with post-secondary or graduate education are more than twice as likely to be involved in an entrepreneurial firms as those with lesser education. Therefore, most would be 22/23 or older (Source: The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor report for 2005)

- The number of entrepreneurs aged 45 to 64 were projected to grow by 15 million by 2006 (Source: A Vanderbilt University Study)

- Older entrepreneurs are responsible for 50% more business start-ups than 10 years ago. This amounts to around 60,000 business start-ups last year alone (Source: A Barclays Bank report, "Third Age Entrepreneurs - Profiting From Experience")

- The average age of entrepreneur graduates when they started their first business was 36. (Source: A 2001 survey of INSEAD MBA graduates)

R.E.D. · Answer

"There are lies, damn lies and statistics", Mark Twain/Benjamin Disraeli. There are young guys who want to turn the whole world upside down. They smoke crack, they put the pirates' Jolly Roger flag over their HQ located in garage and some of them really create incredible things, connecting the previously separated elements of puzzle that opens new perspectives. Such people are rather famous, but rare. They are the real leaders, they are very optimistic and they see the multi-faceted world, they seek for opportunities and they try them. They work hard or they feel what to do to reach the result with minimum effort but maximum bang per buck. To the moment, I know only one guy of this kind. It's very interesting to talk to him, because in his 22 he tried more in snowboarding/alpine skiing than other people do in their whole life, broke his spine, but recovered and now he has a family with a nice son and thinks about opening the snowboarding school. These people have extremely good intuition and this is the thing that gives them insights. They almost always know what should be the next step to be right. Supposedly, this characteristic could be developed in other people... Another type of entrepreneurs are people who worked in industry/consulting, know everything from inside out and in 40-45 they want more freedom and use of opportunities they see but cannot use within the big company or they want to move to another country for more stable life. This type of entrepreneurs is met rather often in emerging markets. The third type are people who never liked to be hired and want to have all the responsibility on their own and they think that they can do things in better ways than other people do. They could be 25-30 or more. These are the main type of people whom I see as entrepreneurs, this list could be extended, but the main idea of writing it is that stats show only how the preferences change among these groups. More of that, you can find more interesting stats for every single country, because the situation changes, depending on multiple factors. It's like the employment stats for the schools - they show mostly what are the chances, on average, of the graduate of this school being hired by certain industry. But the actual employment of you, personally, depends on what you can bring to this work and, certainly, a good bulk of luck

aurobindo · Answer

That was an interesting post. I hope I come across a few guys with that kind of intution..at b-school. I hope this strict screening process won't weed out those inspired people. It would be certainly a joy to watch them live their life.

In this world where everything appears the way we see, can't statistics be a usueful tool?

R.E.D. · Answer

Mostly, it's as in Matrix movie - are you sure that _all_ the things you see around you are as objective as you think they are? Having worked a lot with different statistics I can say that it can show you one facet of the image and involving more variables you see additional facets, but you can hardly say you included all variables. For example, when I worked with import stats, I saw that one region has 20 times greater import than others. Finding that I can say that this region consumes more imported goods than other regions do. But, having worked in a company outside academic university, I know that other regions are afraid of complicated import procedure and they buy from the companies located in first region, inflating its import stats. In private talk, I can tell you much more about those stats because they are only about 30-40% reliable and only for some types of goods. And having only stats on hand you can hardly estimate the real picture of import. You have to talk a lot with different people who work in business and after that you can add your expert estimates to your model and finally get _a bit more_ objective picture

rhyme · Answer

You say Jolly Roger and I immediately think of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jolly_Roger's_Cookbook https://members.lycos.nl/pyrocorp/pyroco ... nar666.htm

R.E.D. · Answer

And I think about Black Pearl...

Once we had a nice party, called Treasure Island - we rented costumes of pirates and in 60 people went to an island on a lake, brought huge speakers, PC with hard drive full of music and made an open air in pirates style

The best part of the party was at night, when at midnight we started our search for treasures with several competitions to get the map of the further trails.

aurobindo · Answer

Yet another theory states that "Jolly Roger" is an English corruption of "Ali Raja," the name of a Tamil pirate. I thought Indians could only be online pirates

Proud of "Ali Raja"

aurobindo · Answer

any luck with treasures? seems no. Otherwise you would n't be writing essays for b-schools

R.E.D. · Answer

I'm not applying for scholarship...

Some interesting stats on Entrepreneurs

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