DailyDirt: Take The Red Pill, Young People
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
In the wake of the Great Recession, many young adults are still having a hard time finding jobs. The recent unemployment rates for young adults (age 20 to 24) is about 13%, which is much higher than the rest of the adult population. Even worse, it seems like young workers (even college graduates) are increasingly taking low-wage jobs. Perhaps it's time for our youth to consider taking a chance and going into business for themselves. Here are a few links that might help convince them to take the plunge.- Upstart, founded by a team of ex-Googlers, is an all-in-one loan agency, investment fund, mentoring network, and dream factory for up-and-comers in their early 20s. To find the most promising candidates, applicants are screened using sophisticated algorithms that can predict their likely future income based on GPA, educational background, past job offers, etc. Upstart helps them raise enough money to get their startups going, and in return, they pay their backers up to 7% of their future income each year for 10 years. [url]
- Check out these class notes from Peter Thiel's course on startups at Stanford, written in essay form. In 2010, venture capitalist and entrepreneur Peter Thiel created the Thiel Fellowship, which awards $100,000 to 20 students under 20 years old, with the goal of encouraging them to create their own startups instead of going to college. [url]
- Read the Upstart blog for founder Dave Girouard's account of how he came up with the idea for Upstart. The blog also has other personal accounts, information about Upstart, and interesting articles and perspectives on entrepreneurship. [url]
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Filed Under: college, entrepreneurs, indentured servants, mentoring, peter thiel, startups, students, upstart
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Unless you have time management, accounting and sales down cold, don't even *think* of "going into business for yourself". You'll waste time and get nowhere.
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That sounds illegal. The SEC has passed "rules" against this type of investing I had heard, because they are granted rulemaking authority under the law to regulate this type of investing. It is pretty much the same thing as offering to pay for someone to go to college and then have them pay you a precentage of their income. And that is definitely illegal under the SEC rules (though most people probably don't pay attention to that if they agree to do that scheme). I'm surprised that this is out in the open and the SEC hasn't shut them down.
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That's a pretty big gamble. They're fresh out of college and already in debt, and the suggestion is for them to take out business loans and try to start up a company?
According to Buisness Insider, "the success rate for first-time entrepreneurs is only 12 percent" (http://www.businessinsider.com/the-odds-of-startup-success-2012-10).
The other 88% will find themselves still jobless and even deeper in the hole after their attempts, with both student and business loans to pay off. Quite possibly in a bad enough situation that "declare bankruptcy" becomes a better choice for them than "find a job".
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I'm older, over 50, an underemployed degreed professional, who can't find squat job-wise, because most of the demand got shipped overseas--and I'm going on 6 years of underemployment; and I was unemployed for 4 years solid.
The real problem is the corporations, and their political lackeys: they do anything they can to impoverish the very people they rely upon to support them to start with. Soon, this vicious cycle has to stop-- and it will take a major crash to wake the idiots up.
Maybe THEN we can stop pandering to the 1%ers, and make our elected officials work for us, instead,
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