So I’m really interested in Entrepreneurship, but I’m also a coder and tech guy so I also want to do Computer Science, but in the end I want to be an entrepreneur who has the affinity with technology and computer science. What should my path look like for high school and college? My goal is to get to a good tech company with a good salary and once I have enough experience (and connections) then I can launch a company (with whatever ideas I have that are good).
If I could have some advice on what I should be doing in high school (not just the subjects I take, but like extracurricularly), what colleges are good, and what majors I should look into… that would be great!
BTW: I’m in an international school in Japan doing IB + I plan to go to US (or maybe uk) for college.
I don’t think there are entrepreneurship courses at college
There are, indeed, entrepreneurship courses at colleges. Some colleges offer it as a minor or even a concentration in their business major; other colleges have special programs for students with entrepreneurial dreams.
I mean, there are a lot of different ways to approach this. Many - I might say most - tech entrepreneurs are developers or engineers themselves; they developed some kind of cutting-edge technology and then decided to take it to market. However, not all are - some of the co-founders of Facebook, for example. Eduardo Saverin majored in economics; Dustin Moskovitz was an economics major before he dropped out of Harvard; and Chris Hughes got his BA in history and literature.
Also, depending on how flexible your definition of ‘entrepreneur’ is, lots of business people are brought into a start-up early on to help manage the finances, seek venture capital and investments, and create and maintain a business plan. I wouldn’t exactly call Sheryl Sandberg an entrepreneur, but she worked at both Google and Facebook when they were pretty early in their development (and she majored in economics…also at Harvard.)
So - the question is, are you interested in developing innovative tech products that could become the foundation(s) for a new company(ies)? If so, majoring in computer science or engineering is likely the way to go. Or are you interested in being an executive and helping start-ups become profitable? Then you might take the business route. (Or you could study both).