YOUNG ENTREPRENEURS – DRIVING THE FUTURE FAST FORWARD

Our daily life is overflowing with technologies that we know have been created by amazing entrepreneurs. But did you know that almost all these innovations have been created by these entrepreneurs at a young age? Don’t believe me, here are the statistics on top-10 innovations that we teenagers come across on a regular basis:

Just from this list you can see the average age of the founders are 24.3 years. The average valuation today is a whopping $700 Billion and total valuation is $7000 Billion. That number contains more zeros than I had imagined, and more so in rupee terms.

Statistics show that around 550,000 people around the world become entrepreneurs in a month. It may seem like a lot, but with a total population of 759.43 crores, the number is quite small. Essentially only 0.007% of the population takes on entrepreneurship every month. Instead, a lot of people prefer to settle for safe and secure jobs, in spite of the desire to become entrepreneurs, because being an entrepreneur is so much more than just starting a business. It’s about addressing challenging problems in a manner not done before, it’s about seeing an opportunity and grabbing it even if others may view it as a risky venture. Why? Because not many people have the mind-set to be able to travel the road unknown.

If we compare entrepreneurship to sports, do you think Usain Bolt became the fastest runner by reading books about how to run faster? No. He’s been training for competitive tournaments since the tender age of 7 years old. Entrepreneurship is a sport like any other. It trains us how to plan in order to accomplish our goals, push ourselves towards excellence, overcome failure by learning, using the trial and error method, experience the ultimate joys of victory, and most importantly become the best version of ourselves. But why did Usain Bolt start training so early? Why not wait six months before his Olympic tournament to start practicing? Usain Bolt, as did various other athletes and entrepreneurs, realized how important it is to begin early. All great sportsmen start at a young age and constantly experiment embracing failures along the way, but the experiences they gain over the years is what makes them succeed today. And if one considers entrepreneurship as a sport, shouldn’t entrepreneurs start their journey early too?

We as young kids are taught to study hard in order to get good grades so that someday we may grow up and get a good job. But why has no one ever spoken about how we can grow up and CREATE jobs? Why not use our vivid minds to find our passion and use our energy to propel us to coming up with something so astounding that it creates tremendous value instead of sitting at home because we are too afraid to even to start, lest we fail. Despite the saying, consumer is king, I believe that our society is governed by creators and not by the consumers. The list of young entrepreneurs above clearly demonstrates that creators change society’s behavioral patterns. Therefore, we can say with confidence that our society is governed by entrepreneurs.

We as high schoolers love to complain about how hard our lives are and from our limited vantage point we may not be wrong in our perspective. But in the midst of all the thoughts running in our heads about how we’re going to ace that test or what that girl thinks of my dress today, we are oblivious to the fact that us young kids have the perfect opportunity to take risks and create something fabulous! In the next fifteen years of our lives, all of us are going to have to worry about paying taxes and putting food on the table for our family. These are probably the last few years of genuine freedom for all us teenagers. In our generation, being a young entrepreneur has been made very simple, all you need is a stable internet connection, a laptop/phone and a drive to create.

Ever since I was a kid, I wanted to be the person to drive change in the world; I wanted to be an entrepreneur. Just a few years ago, juggling school, fencing training, extracurricular activities and having fun became hard to manage. In order to manage my time and schedule, I came up with the idea of a bullet journal. Now was the idea my own? No, there are several so called bullet journals out there. But were the designs and trends my own? Absolutely, 100%. Once I created and used the bullet journal, not only did I realize how well I was able to manage my time, but I realized that I had solved a problem of my own! My parents encouraged me to make more and sell them. I sold only 11 bullet journals over the seventh grade summer, but at that time the accomplishment was exhilarating. One of the greatest advantages that we as young people have is that we lack an understanding of how difficult it may be to pull off a business venture, such as how time consuming making a 400-page book 11 times is, that too with a looming deadline! Now being the big dreamer I am, I really believed that my bullet journals were supposed to make me a millionaire! And while that may have turned out a bummer, I learnt at an early age how to persevere and not get weighed down by failure. It was my eleven-year-old energy, passion and experience that allowed me to venture forward and to come out learning how to be organised, understand people better and improve my bullet journals.

Most of us teenagers want to unleash our rebellious sides. Entrepreneurship gives us that opportunity. WE are the ones creating OUR rules, WE decide how we want to work on the product, WE decide which is the most effective way to make our venture a success. It’s quite the opposite of anything we have ever experienced before and gives us a peek into what it’s like to be part of the entrepreneurial world.

Now we get to be the BOSS! No longer are you a passive consumer, but rather an active creator. We as young kids, have everything to gain by taking a risk. Your idea didn’t work out? So what, it’s a success anyway, as you just spent your time being productive and doing something you truly believe in. You learn new skills and learning these skills at such an early age is invaluable with so much life left ahead of us. In our society which is governed by entrepreneurs, we can all have a better reach to the world we live in by being the ones who try to change it.