Are "millenial" tech entrepreneurs ruining it for the rest?

In a recent article for Forbes, Are Millenial Internet Entrepreneurs Hurting the Economy?, Larissa Faw proposes that when it comes to tech startups, young, impatient, creative and overly ambitious "millenials" are actually dominating over more experienced entrepreneurs, even though the latter has more plentiful capital and traditional business skills.

The discrepancy, she says, is all in the understanding of the internet. Its nuances, trends, conventions, connections. As a prerequisite, the best businesses these days need a superbly functional website.
Many older entrepreneurs don't have the technical skills to create a company website. They don't have the same intimate knowledge of online marketing.

Now consider that many (but not all) millenials have these skills. And if they don't, they have the skills and confidence to learn them (from a simple Google search, video instructional or mass Twitter cry for help).

What's more, they have the cultural capital to use online resources effectively. They have their finger on the pulse. Social media has brought the market and the customers for digital innovation all to one place, and we're all immersed in it.

There has been a power shift, and the pre-web generation of entrepreneurs is being left behind.

Scott Shane from youngentrepreneur.com has a different view, attributing the rise in young entrepreneurs to the economic downturn and consequent lack of employment options for graduates, rather than their superior technical skills or social media know-how. He believes that social and political commentators have exaggerated achievements of young entrepreneurs to present them as the panacea to  America's economic problems, while in reality, they're not doing all that much.

DAD????

Whether or not that is the case, my own dad had a sad realisation just a few weeks ago. Always having considered himself a natural entrepreneur, having learnt the ropes over decades of hard work, he always imagined that if he was to start from scratch, creating a business the second time around would be relatively easy. He knew exactly what not to do.

But then came the internet, BRW (his bible) filled with stories of young internet moguls and my technologically disabled father realised he was out of the loop. So were his peers and networks, and it was very unlikely they were going to get back in it.

This raises an intriguing question. Will gen-Y we be the first and last generation to overtake our elders in the entrepreneurship field, given we're the first to grow up understanding the internet? Or will the young tech gurus in 20 years' time be coming up with better billion dollar apps than millenials?

Perhaps the coolest question revolves around how savvy young entrepreneurs can pair up with more experienced baby boomers/gen Xers (and their money) to build awesome startups more efficiently, effectively and regularly?

Could this type of partnership or venture funding be one solution to the problem of Australia's startup funding, as Laura discussed in the previous post, Silicon Valley and the 'Brain Drain'?

The Entrepreneur Rollercoaster

Check out this interesting video of The Entrepreneur Rollercoaster; the highs and lows of a startup journey:

 

 

Vibewire and beyond

Vibewire Youth Inc is a truly youth-oriented organisation, founded by young people and taking university students as interns. It exists to support young people in effectively shaping their world through media, arts and entrepreneurial opportunities. You can visit Vibewire's main website.

Vibewire was founded by Tom Dawkins in 2000, who served as CEO until 2008. Tom has also involved in a number of successful projects, such as StartSomeGood, which aims at empowering entrepreneurs by providing financial and intellectual support through their website. Tom recently moved back from the US after 4 years, where he expanded his entrepreneurial experience and increased his Twitter following to over 300 000. I think it would be great to have Tom Dawkins share with us his experiences of establishing the Vibewire organisation, and to have him talk about supporting young entrepreneurs, in our feature project.

Have a look at Vibewire current board members here. Most of them are young people, who believe in the potential of young minds and who support young entrepreneurs. For example, Annie Le Cavalier, the Vice-President of Vibewire, is a digitally-savvy social entrepreneur and a story-teller, who loves to inspire young people. There is a great chance they would be willing to share their stories.

 




Silicon Valley and the 'Brain Drain'

In May, SMH's technology editor Asher Moses published a piece entitled 'Brain Drain: why young entrepreneurs leave home'.

Through interviews with young Aussie entrepreneurs and various key venture capitalists, the article paints a picture of an Australian entrepreneurial market that is lacking in investments and therefore not keeping up with the rest of the world.

Accompanying the article was a link to Asher's new web documentary series, 'Digital Dreamers' where he follows a group of young Australian entrepreneurs on a 'start up bus' around America seeking investments for their tech development ideas. The message, as Moses states, is that 'Australia ignores its innovators at its peril', as many of Australia's brightest young entrepreneurs are jumping ship to America to try their luck at the 'mecca' of technological design and investment, Silicon Valley.

This article provided us with key ideas and background info to start us off on our research. Firstly we decided to look closer into this phenomenon of young Australian entrepreneurs leaving home for America. If this was a real trend, then the feature would make more sense to focus on only successful Australian (rather than international) entrepreneurs and how they succeeded without leaving home. Therefore the feature would take on broader aspect of researching why the Australian entrepreneurial field is not up to scratch and then more specifically how it is possible to make it from home and, acting as an important resource for young entrepreneurs looking for tips, examples, common pitfalls etc in the entrepreneurial field.

Nikki Durkin, founder of 99Dresses

A little more digging around however, and we found that Moses' conception of the Australian entrepreneurial field was not held across the board. An article in BRW entitled 'Why Australian technology start-ups don't need to go to Silicon Valley' offered a slightly more balanced picture. It appears that Nikki Durkin, the poster girl for Moses's article and creator of online fashion powerhouse 99Dresses, has returned home after a brief stint in Silicon Valley stating it was 'too expensive' for a start up such as hers.

The article goes on to explore how in many ways, making the jump to America is not always the wisest choice compared to staying home-grown. Companies such as Atlassian, Australia's most succesful tech start-up, prove how staying home-grown or incorporated a blended approach of American and Australian based business models can be effective. Just ten years after starting the company as uni students at UNSW,with just $10,000 in credit card debt, Scott Farquhar and Mike Cannon-Brookes' companyAtlassian is regarded internationally as a powerhouse in enterprise software. In July 2010, the duo turned heads globally after taking $60 million from Silicon Valley venture capital. All without leaving home.

The article goes on to list many other smaller yet successful startups that are Australian based businesses such as Shoes of Prey (founded by 3 out of 4 of the people behind our case study Sneaking Duck!), Bubble Gum Interactive, rome2rio and BugHerd.

Conclusion- the entrepreneurial field in Australia has it's benefits and it's drawbacks and it's not a simple case of entrepreneurial exodus to America or stagnation. There are a bunch of great startup companies growing even just in the past few years and we need to start getting out there and talking to them!

The Frank Team: Inspiration for young entrepreneurs

The Frank Team is the not-for-profit group behind the fantastic guidance/motivational/networking website for young entrepreneurs: youngentrepreneurs.net.au.

The website is an incredibly comprehensive guide to entrepreneurship for a young audience. It provides access to a network of entrepreneurs, displays dozens of feature articles, collates success stories, gives specific advice for start-ups and answers FAQs. It's a brilliant resource for entrepreneurs, and for our project.

It differs significantly from our own web feature, firstly because it does not focus purely on internet start-ups. Also, it is primarily a "how-to" support website aimed at encouraging and fostering entrepreneurship, whereas our feature is case study-based investigation into an issue with Australia's entrepreneurial culture.

'Entrepreneurship'- What is it?

We all have some vague concept of what an entrepreneur does. Richard Branson is a name often bandied around as a poster child for entrepreneurship. But what exactly makes someone an entrepreneur?

Howard Business School professor Howard Stevenson defined entrepreneurship almost 40 years ago as “the pursuit of opportunity without regard to resources currently controlled.”

Fast-forward to the present, and the core remains the same. Entrepreneurs see a niche in the market that they are capable of capitalising on, be it product or service.

The other major consideration that Professor Stevenson highlighted belies the risk that comes with many entrepreneurial ventures. Having a great idea is one thing. It takes resources to transform words and concepts into reality.

There is rarely a ‘sure thing’ when it comes to entrepreneurship. With the advent of the Internet as a great unifying transnational force, competition has become more intense than ever.

But, with great risk comes great reward. Here at the Online Entrepreneur, we’ll be delving into all these issues and more in the upcoming months!

For now, I’m going to leave you with this humorous depiction highlighting just how baffling entrepreneurs are to the rest of the world. How do you see yourself?

A new generation of internet entrepreneurs

Switched-on, innovative and tech-savvy.

Our theory is that Gen-Y entrepreneurs are starting businesses younger and in more diverse fields than their predecessors, all thanks to shortcuts afforded by the internet.

By providing ubiquitous access to a global marketplace, connections to international suppliers, like-minded individuals and mentors, and of course a plethora of information, the internet is enabling young people to dip their toes in the entrepreneurial pool – and they’re making pretty big waves.

The poster boy for internet entrepreneurship, Mark Zuckerberg, concocted his internet game-changer at the tender age of 20. Facebook has subsequently swallowed up the world, earning its founder a tidy US$14.7 billion. [Read: The origins of Facebook. ]

Other social media kingpins include David Karp, who started Tumblr at age 21, and Matthew Mullenweg, who founded WordPress at 19.

And who could forget the young guns who recently sold their smartphone app Instagram for US$1 billion?

Thinking about these young business gurus can be depressing for us mere mortals who spent our 20^th years juggling the regular demands of the uni life.

Young rich: L to R Instagram engineer & co-founder Mike Krieger, engineer Shayne Sweeney, CEO & co-founder Kevin Systrom & community manager Josh Riedell. Picture from SMH.com.au

But there are success stories that are slightly more relatable: young people teaming up with software developers to make apps, or simply relocating traditional businesses online, setting up online fashion stores and distribution systems and sourcing their suppliers - you guessed it - over the internet.

In the course of the next several weeks, we will endeavour to unravel this phenomenon and dig up fascinating stories about young people who’ve made a mint over the internet.