Our new article, “The Entrepreneurial Generation Abroad,” finds more Milllennial generation entrepreneurs are starting businesses abroad and at home in America.
The global consulting giant Deloitte confirms the Millennial move to entrepreneurship in its study, “The Deloitte Millennial Survey.”
Deloitte finds that about 70 percent of Millennials (18-to-34-year-olds who are also known as Gen Y) 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 reports, “While 52 percent of Millennials in developed markets expect to eventually work independently, this figure rises to 82 percent in emerging markets.”
And many of those Millennial entrepreneurs are headed abroad. Research we did several years ago found that 41 percent of older Millennials (25-34-year-old) gave starting a new business as a key reason for wanting to move abroad.
To figure out what is happening with Millennials, we interviewed author and long-time Inc. Magazine contributing editor Donna Fenn, who has a deep understanding of Millennial entrepreneurs from her over thirty 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.
“Before, starting your own company seemed the riskier thing to do,” Fenn says, “but now the riskier thing may be to hitch your star to a big company.”
Overall, Fenn says about 10 percent of the U.S. adult population start their own businesses, but that figure jumps to 70 percent among Milllennials, a seismic shift from previous generations.
And, more and more Millennials are finding entrepreneurial opportunities abound abroad.
In exploding emerging markets around the globe, young entrepreneurs are finding opportunity. Fenn says she attended a recent launch for a new company called Andela, an education start up that recruits the best and brightest young people in Africa and trains them to be computer coders to work for American companies.
“I think Africa represents incredible opportunity,” she says. “When you look at the growth of mobile technology, especially in Africa, you can see the opportunity.”