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<p>I worked in a company that shared an office with an entrepreneur. He was in his 50s and he had tried startup after startup after startup and failed many times. He hit the bigtime while I was there.</p>
<p>So there you go, were back to luck and timing :)</p>
<p>Good luck to your son. I’m sure he’ll do fine, no matter which path he takes.</p>
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<p>I didn’t have a way to pay for a second year of college either.</p>
<p>Well, without borrowing money.</p>
<p>The ultimate entrepreneur story</p>
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<p>The Death of a Countess in Exile
<a href=“In New York, the Death of a Countess in Exile - The New York Times”>In New York, the Death of a Countess in Exile - The New York Times;
<p>There’s college-educated entrepreneurs, and non-college-educated entrepreneurs. I know both. Success is not mutually exclusive to either. I can’t even say that college or non-college contributes to a risk factor.</p>
<p>I say the best knowledge is know-how. Within that, the #1 know-how is problem solving. However you get it is fine with me. </p>
<p>I believe the key to entrepreneurial success is know-how built on a basis of philosophy. “101 Great Philosophers” by Madsen Pirie is a good bathroom book primer. Once you understand the Big Picture, the smaller issues (finance, law, marketing, psychology, politics, etc.) become easier to resolve.</p>
<p>To me, the smartest person in the room isn’t the one with the most “knowledge”. It’s the one who asks the right questions. </p>
<p>That’s Socrates, by the way.</p>
<p>As with most topics is it difficult to generalize, but starting a business requires a lot more skills then just having a ‘great idea’.</p>
<p>We’re assuming more skills. Kids can pick up amazing skills as teenagers. But some of that may be due to their environment.</p>
<p>I recall an entrepreneur outside the NYC Apple Store several years ago. It was a very hot and humid day and this guy gets out of a car and grabs a cooler out of the trunk and puts it on the sidewalk. The car drove away and he took a cold bottle out of the cooler and started his pitch: an ice-cold bottle of water for $1. I had no idea as to whether or not this was legal (peddler’s license, etc.) but I thought that he was pretty creative. He had a great voice and presence for sales.</p>
<p>“The German company StarDivision in Lüneburg (founded by 16-year-old Marco Börries in 1984) wrote the original components of StarOffice. StarDivision developed the first version of StarWriter for the Zilog Z80 home-computer system, the Amstrad CPC (marketed by Schneider in Germany) under CP/M, and later for the Commodore 64 under Microsoft BASIC[citation needed], which was later ported to the 8086-based Amstrad PC-1512, running under MS-DOS 3.2. Later, the integration of the other individual programs followed as the development progressed to an Office Suite for DOS, IBM’s OS/2 Warp, and for the Microsoft Windows operating-system. From this time onwards StarDivision marketed its suite under the name “StarOffice.””</p>
<p>“Until version 4.2, StarDivision based StarOffice on the cross-platform C++ class library StarView. In 1998 StarDivision began offering StarOffice for free.”</p>
<p>“Sun Microsystems acquired the company, copyright and trademark of StarOffice in 1999 for US$73.5 million. Sun wanted to compete with Microsoft Office, and also wanted to save money on licenses for Microsoft Office and Windows:”</p>
<p>[StarOffice</a> - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarOffice]StarOffice”>StarOffice - Wikipedia)</p>
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<p>If he doesn’t have a sidewalk vendor license from NYC, he could have been shut down at any moment by the authorities if they knew about it and/or were so inclined. Of course, since they can’t be everywhere at once…many do succeed in getting away with it.</p>
<p>Come to the beaches in Southern Calif any summer and you will see young men plodding through the sand carrying a coolers on their shoulder selling ice cream and cold drinks. Then another one will pass by selling foam boards to body surf. It is a pretty typical occurrence. I imagine they do need some type of license to sell there as well.</p>
<p>Apparently, the definition of “entrepreneur” must vary widely for those commenting here, particularly when referring to ‘once in a lifetime opportunities’ good enough to quit college. I am referring to someone who starts an ongoing business related to producing goods or providing services. Anyone can re-sell beverages from the trunk of their car and you certainly don’t have to quit college to do that, I seriously doubt that many make a living doing that.</p>
<p>Its because of reckless people rushing ahead with their lives without proper backup and planning that things like real estate bubble bursts and government bailouts have to happen.</p>
<p>Can it be the correct, profitable choice?
Yes, but its still dangerous and highly risky.</p>
<p>College provides a backup to fall onto should the worst occur. Yes, you may lose the opportunity or drive, but that opportunity and drive is typically fueled by simple ideas and passion - usually not the best planning. And honestly - who can truly plan for and adequately predict how their startups would end up? There’s a reason 90% of them fail.</p>
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<p>Life is that way. Even with a college degree.</p>
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<p>You can always go to college; you can’t always get a job.</p>
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<p>How well do kids plan while in college. Why do we have five and six year college graduation rates? Good planning?</p>
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<p>Same with a college degree.</p>
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<p>When you fail, what do you do? You pick yourself up and start again.</p>
<p>What’s the college success rate these days? What percentage of students that start, actually get their degree. Then what percentage of those actually have a job in hand in their field when they graduate?</p>
<p>Here you go, this is how many start ups fail and why</p>
<p>[Startup</a> Business Failure Rate By Industry | Statistic Brain](<a href=“http://www.statisticbrain.com/startup-failure-by-industry/]Startup”>Startup Business Failure Rate By Industry - Statistic Brain)</p>
<p>This next one is not so generous. 75% of start ups fail it says:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/blog/2012/09/most-startups-fail-says-harvard.html?page=all[/url]”>http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/blog/2012/09/most-startups-fail-says-harvard.html?page=all</a></p>
<p>What about companies that don’t get use VC? Those that operate with cash flow from operations to fund product development?</p>
<p>The first link does not specify. The second link are ones with V.C.</p>
<p>However, as you know, building a business a little at a time without VC or by taking out some type of big loan means that you can only grow at a slow steady pace provided nothing comes along that causes your business to tank. </p>
<p>You would really need something else to fall back on or a secondary business that the new one is an off shoot of.</p>
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<p>Yes, not everyone is greedy.</p>
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<p>There was a common business model in the 1980s where you had a consulting company that generated income through billing out IT and IS work that funded internal projects that would be sold to multiple customers. Sometimes these products were developed for a particular customer while the consulting company retained the rights to resell the product. You designed the product to be portable - not company-specific.</p>
<p>What do you do if you can’t afford college? What do you do if you’re one of the two-thirds of the population that doesn’t have a college degree? What’s your backup plan?</p>
<p>One of these 
but you still probably need to spend money on some of training</p>
<p>[Top</a> Ten Lists :: Highest Paying Jobs Without College](<a href=“http://www.myplan.com/careers/top-ten/highest-paying-without-college.php]Top”>Top Ten Lists :: Highest Paying Jobs Without College)</p>
<p>“Where is this magical educational advantage that everyone likes to talk about because my husband has an MBA and is working as a security guard.”</p>
<p>[Project</a> on Student Debt: Voices Story](<a href=“http://projectonstudentdebt.org/voices_view.php?idx=522]Project”>http://projectonstudentdebt.org/voices_view.php?idx=522)</p>
<p>I’ve read through a few pages of Voices and it is very scary stuff. You get the idea that there are a lot of people out there struggling with finding employment and dealing with student loans. Many regret going to college; most regret the student loans. These are people that have jobs, sometimes good jobs, and those that don’t have jobs. The realization that you’re going to spend the rest of your life in debt and that you can’t really accumulate any assets has to be terrifying.</p>
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<p>For many of the students who leave college to do some entrepreneurial venture, returning to college to complete the degree is the backup if the entrepreneurial venture fails (as most do). Leaving college in good academic standing is not the irrevocable decision that most people seem to think it is, since many colleges are generous at readmitting students who left in good academic standing. Think of it like a co-op job or gap year, which seem to be things that most people on this forum endorse. The only caution is to avoid running up a lot of personal debt – a caution similar to that which applies when choosing a college to attend.</p>