By Miles Jennings
Do young people view entrepreneurship as a viable career option? Not according to a 2015 analysis by The Wall Street Journal that showed that only 3.6 percent of households headed by adults younger than 30 owned stakes in private companies.
While media reports glamorize successful entrepreneurs such as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel, the WSJ article calls young entrepreneurs an “endangered species.”
Competition is tough. Capital is scarce. The environment rapidly changes. Education is expensive.
So what should society be telling young people about entrepreneurship?
In November, I was involved in an entrepreneurship discussion at Pathways Academy of Technology and Design in Hartford, Conn., along with some other business owners. The discussion was practical and informative, but afterward I realized that it might have done little to inspire and may have inadvertently scared off the high schoolers by emphasizing initial struggles.
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