Jobs? We don't need no stinking jobs!
After spending time lately with people running Web start-ups, I can see an interesting pattern that I hadn't been aware of. Many of them are Gen-Xers who spent the dot-com era working in IT departments of large corporations, or for large technology companies, like EMC or Adobe. Now that Web 2.0 is presenting them with a market that is receptive for new products and development strategies that have a low barrier to entry, they have quit their jobs and bet their savings on a year or two without a paycheck while they try to build something cool.
This reflects an interesting confidence in their abilities and the market. Part of that confidence shows up in their reluctance to take venture capital money early in the game. That is a reversal of the model in the dot com and the several years after, when entrepreneurs would identify a market need, write a business plan, shop it around, and only start development after the money was raised. This model was based on the idea that VCs played a role in vetting ideas at an early stage; if a plan can't raise money, the product probably isn't going to find a market. It isn't just that this new breed of start-upers don't want to take money early on as a way of preventing dilution of their ownership. They don't think the VCs are necessary to validate their ideas. They know that the market will play that role.
I don't even think many of these people think of themselves as "entrepreneurs." They don't seem to use that word to describe themselves. Maybe it is too much of a Boomer term. They surely want to make money, but even more important is the opportunity to work for themselves. More than anything else, they don't want a job, they want their own company. Maybe it is all that time spent in cubicles. One thing many of them say is that this is their last chance to keep from working for someone else for the rest of their lives. They aren't saying it is their chance to get rich. I think they are running from a life of being held back by Boomer managers. As long as they are doing something out of love for technology, it is better than possibly making more money in a 9-5 job.
