The 18-to-34-year-old Millennial generation (also known as Gen Y) is widely known as the most entrepreneurial generation in modern times, more often today shunning the corporate ladder to start new businesses of their own.
Earlier this year, the global consulting giant Deloitte confirmed the Millennial move to entrepreneurship in its study, “The Deloitte Millennial Survey.”
Deloitte found that about 70 percent of Millennials see themselves as working independently at some point, rather than being employed within a traditional organizational structure. Even more eye opening was the difference between emerging markets and developed markets. The study reported, “While 52 percent of Millennials in developed markets expect to eventually work independently, this figure rises to 82 percent in emerging markets.”
Research MyInternationalAdventure conducted several years ago found that 41 percent of 25-34-year-old Millennials gave starting a new business as a key reason for moving abroad.
Author and long-time Inc. Magazine contributing editor Donna Fenn has a deep understanding of Millennial entrepreneurs from her over 30 years of reporting on the subject. Her book, “Upstarts!: How Gen Y Entrepreneurs are Rocking the World of Business and 8 Ways You Can Profit from Their Success,” captured the Milllennial entrepreneurial movement early on.
We asked her why Millennials are taking to entrepreneurship like no other generation before.
“Being an entrepreneur was not always viewed positively by previous generations,” she told us, “but this generation does not remember a time when entrepreneurs were not viewed as rock stars. Perceptions began to change in the 1980s when Steve Jobs, Michael Dell, Bill Gates, Richard Branson and others, became very successful entrepreneur role models and continues today with people like Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg.”
Fenn said that among Millennials there is a basic distrust of institutions, whether its government or big companies. They have lived through corporate scandals and have watched their Baby Boomer parents being laid off after many years of service to big corporations, and know there is no longer such a thing as getting a gold watch after thirty years of service.
“Before, starting your own company seemed the riskier thing to do,” Fenn said, “but now the riskier thing may be to hitch your star to a big company.”
Overall, Fenn said about 10 percent of the U.S. adult population start their own businesses, but as noted in the Deloitte study, that figure jumps to 70 percent among Milllennials.
Millennial entrepreneurs come in several different flavors. “Entrepreneurs can be someone who starts a bona fide company with venture capital or whatever savings they have in their bank account with the intention of hiring people, creating an infrastructure and growing a business,” Fenn said. “But an entrepreneur can also be a soloist who does not have employees. They may have colleagues who they work with on a project when they need extra help but it still makes them entrepreneurs.”
Since Millennials are the first truly digital generation, we asked Fenn if they have a bias towards starting Internet businesses. “If they are not digital-based or Internet businesses,” she said, “they are certainly businesses employing technology in very interesting ways, so in a way every business is a tech business.”
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