by Stuart Crainer
"Thirty years ago, MBA students dreamed of running
General Motors; ten years ago they dreamed of working at Goldman Sachs;
five years ago it was McKinsey. Now they dream about running their own
company," says Antonio Borges, dean of the leading European business school
INSEAD.
This is the era of the entrepreneur. What began in
the entrepreneurial melting pot of Silicon Valley, as a dream for a select
few, has become a worldwide phenomenon. For growing numbers of young people,
creating a business has become a calling; a vocation; a mission. It is
the spirit of the age.
The new breed of entrepreneurs thinks differently about
life in general -- and business in particular. The change is evident even
to the naked eye. In business, gray hair and conservative suits used to
be compulsory. Now fresh-faced entrepreneurs in combat pants stare out
from countless business magazines. They do not wear ties.
In traditional corporate terms, some are just out of
diapers. An American venture capitalist relates that a celebration dinner
for a new company in Boston lacked fizz because the venture capitalists
were the only ones at the table old enough to drink. Some 46 percent of
businesses in America are now started by people who are 35 or under. úThemî
and úusî used to refer to workers and managers. Now it refers to the older
generation of managers and their younger colleagues. And the old are making
desperate attempts to catch up or get up to speed with the new generation.
Forget golf weekends for up-and-coming execs; think bungee jumping. Forget
skiing; think snowboarding.
Most people have heard of the new generationüs big
hitters: thirty-somethingüs like Michael Dell, founder of Dell Corporation,
and Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com; and twenty-somethingüs like the
co-founder of Netscape Marc Andreessen (just 23 when he led a team of
programmers that created the web browser Netscape Navigator). Alongside
them are a host of others. Their faces have not appeared in Fast Company
or Business 2.0 quite so regularly but the youth, entrepreneurial zeal
and wealth of people like Dan Snyder of Snyder Communications or Jerry
Greenberg of Sapient are equally impressive.
The list of the young and fabulously wealthy is lengthening,
but represents the tip of the iceberg ì- an iceberg that is sinking old-style
corporations.
The mass of the iceberg consists of bright sparks in
Warsaw, Poland, with smart ideas; software designers in Cork, Ireland;
shaven headed management gurus in Stockholm, Sweden; college drop outs
wired-up and wised-up sitting in Montana intent on having the lifestyle
they want -- and think they deserve.
The mass of the iceberg is made up of people like computer
retailer Tahir Mohsan, founder of Time Computer Systems, who is now worth
some £27 million ($44.5 million). Still in his late twenties, Mohsan only
set up the company to keep his brother out of trouble. And young aspirants
like Gareth Evans who has his own company, Webfire, creating web sites.
Still a student, heüs already talking about employing more people. Gareth
is 20-years-old. But his are modest ambitions compared to some. David
Koretz thinks big. He aims to be a billionaire, or a multimillionaire
at the very least, by the time heüs 25.
Aged seven, Koretz set up shop in his driveway to sell
shells. By the age of ten, he had developed a keen interest in the stock
market. He started his first real business at 14 -- Compucepts, a computer
repair service, which evolved into an international electronics-distribution
firm. He launched the second -- a web site development business called
Webvertisements -- when he was a high school senior. In 1997, Koretz shut
down Compucepts ("a good educational experience" but never highly profitable)
and sold Webvertisements to his partner. This allowed him to concentrate
on Network Marketing International (NMI), the business he started when
he was 17. In 1998, NMI, a web-based business that generates and distributes
sales leads, got financial backing -- a healthy injection of venture capital
funding.
Koretz put his college education on hold. For some,
business is the new education. Instead of raising hell; they are raising
capital.
Stuart Crainer is author of The Management Century (Jossey-Bass Inc.,
Publishers, 2000).
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