Many of us dream to be an entrepreneur. However, there’s no scripted way to become an entrepreneur, not to mention that entrepreneurs were born with a silver spoon in their mouths.
To investigate what makes a person become a successful entrepreneur, Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation carried a research project aimed to answer the following question: Are entrepreneurs born, or are they made?
The project, which entitled, “The Anatomy of an Entrepreneur: Family Background and Motivation [PDF]” involving a survey of 549 company founders across a variety of industries.
The findings of the project is very interesting and some of the data will surprise you.
- The average and median age of company founders when they started their current companies was 40.
- 95.1 percent of respondents themselves had earned bachelor’s degrees, and 47 percent had more advanced degrees.
- 71.5 percent of respondents came from middle-class backgrounds (34.6 percent upper-middle class and 36.9 percent lower-middle class).
- Less than 1 percent came from extremely rich or extremely poor backgrounds.
- More than half (51.9 percent) of respondents were the first in their families to launch a business.
- 69.9 percent of respondents indicated they were married when they launched their first business. An additional 5.2 percent were divorced, separated, or widowed.
- 59.7 percent of respondents indicated they had at least one child when they launched their first business, and 43.5 percent had two or more children.
- 74.8 percent of respondents indicated desire to build wealth as an important motivation in becoming an entrepreneur.
- 80.3 percent of respondents stated that inability to find traditional employment was not at all a factor in starting their own businesses. Only 4.5 percent said this was an important factor.
- The majority of respondents (75.4 percent) had worked as employees at other companies for more than six years before launching their own companies. Nearly half (47.9 percent) launched their first companies with more than ten years of work experience.
In related findings, we also surprised to learn that many successful entrepreneurs got their start in a very pedestrian position of their career.
The following infographic show the first job of the 15 successful entrepreneurs in the American History so far:
Ross Perot: Horse Breaker
Wayne Hulzenga: Gas Station Attendant
Warren Buffet: Newspaper Delivery Boy
Sam Walton: Newspaper Delivery Boy
Marc Andressen: Programmer at NCSA
Larry Ellison: Technician at Wells Fargo
Michael Dell: Dishwasher
Ray Kroc: Paper Cup Salesman
Herb Kelleher: Campbell’s Soup Worker
Steve Jobs: Technician at Atari
Bill Gates: Programmer
Andrew Carnegie: Changed Spools of Thread
Walt Disney: Newspaper Delivery Boy
John D. Rockefeller: Assistant Bookkeeper
Henry Ford: Steam Engine Mechanic
Source: available at http://grasshoppergroup.com/famous-entrepreneurs-steve-jobs-first-job/, accessed July 14, 2010
