Life of FBi | Non-Tech Start-up Founder

This article was mostly inspired by Jeff Bussgang‘s article A Lost Generation of Entrepreneurs;

We have a lost generation of entrepreneurs. Not enough 20-somethings, or let’s even say under 35, have had the opportunity to see success at a young age and learn the important lessons of start-up leadership … When my partners and I tried to develop a list of today’s under 35 entrepreneurs who had started companies and seen meaningful success with them, it was a depressingly short list.

When I first started exploring the Boston startup scene, I was brash and arrogant. In fact, Scott Kirsner, publicly asked, “okay, you’re angry, what are you going to do about it” in response to a rant that the community wasn’t doing enough for young, first time entrepreneurs.  When I asked James Geshwiler if he was committing Common Angels (he’s the Managing Director) to any support of young first-timers, he immediately went to quote the Kauffman Foundation report from late last year citing that the average ‘successful’ entrepreneur was 40. I used to get blindly frustrated at responses like that and wonder how were things ever to improve for young guys inspired to start interesting companies.  But if you think about, it’s fairly logical right? 20-somethings can’t really be expected to launch, grow and run successful companies? A community or a society shouldn’t be supporting something that’s most likely going to fail?

Through my various interactions with people in the Boston startup community, especially with a lot of young peers launching companies, I started to wonder what really was the optimal age to start a company. A really close friend of mine took a year off from a top Boston engineering undergrad program to work on an education software-as-a-service technology. He and his team came up with something fairly interesting, but it’s a big project and startups are difficult. After much work, many lessons learned, he’s now back at school finishing off his degree, and ready to spend the summer at Google, possibly, and probably, leaving the dream of launching a company whilst still at school behind. Instead, he’ll probably go to Google after college, then to Harvard Business School a couple of years later. At that stage, he’ll have a bit of financial capital, be much more connected, and generally have far more knowledge to be in a much more optimal position to launch a great company. Am I sad that this would mean potentially one less young rock star Boston entrepreneur? Definitely. But do I think this is the right move for my friend. Most probably.

Given I haven’t started a successful company, am merely attempting to, I can’t properly answer the question in the title. What I will say is, without empirical evidence, there are a lot of early 20s (not to mention the freakish Mark Bao‘s of the world) in Boston, and I’m sure in a lot of other places, passionate about startups. There is an element of ‘it’s the cool thing to do’ (thinking back to the post Why for Students Entrepreneurship is the New Investment Banking) but there are more compelling fundamental reasons why the ‘supply’ of companies entering the marketplace founded by an early 20-something will increase by multiples in the next five years.

Is it best that a significant majority try and fail, but learn and try later in life, or are there solutions to this social phenomenon of young people going from lemonade stand to hiring their father’s friends.

From a couple of conversations with a close friend in Boston who has recently started blogging, and then by girlfriend who just opened a WordPress account, I was challenged with the question – What do I actually blog about? It was in my explanation to them that one must find an audience to speak to, be empathetic to it, and provide something of value to them, that I realized, once again, I think I’m moderately good at giving advice (i.e. I’m gifted in talking crap), but often fail on executing on what I know I should. Who is my audience, who I am writing to, and most importantly, why should anyone listen?

It somehow seems that people out there are listening. Between my periodic comments on my posts and my WordPress Stats telling me that I do indeed get a decently daily readership, I thought I might as well state my intentions. So here it is. The Life of F Bi is a life of doing things, especially the BIG THINGS, differently. There have been some interesting lessons learnt from it, and for the most part I think there are some values in those stories. My intention is not to be a story teller, partly because I’m not a very good one. But rather to share observations and hopefully some insights as to why doing things differently might be of interest to you, especially if you’re young, don’t have too many financial or family obligations, and have the patience and ambition to discover yourself.

[Back in the day in London 2006 when I was certain I wanted to dedicate my life to climbing the ranks of investment wanking]

Now I am far from the most qualified person to convey this message, after all my life is far from extraordinary. On paper, I am 22, have no degree, no job prospects, and no visa into the country I wish to reside. Yet by 22, I have lived in four continents for a year or more, worked in a startup finance company in London straight out of high school, interned at PricewaterhouseCoopers whilst starting university, received a full-time offer from Australia’s biggest investment bank before even finishing first-year uni (which I took), started what became Sydney’s biggest youth-based think tank with no experience in academia or policy/advocacy work, bought my first convertible sports car before turning 20, and have now worked on my own startup from Sydney to Boston to Shanghai.

So for someone who doesn’t really believe in luck, I’m partly arrogant, but partly think there’s some method to this madness. For the last few years especially, I’ve been dedicated to doing things differently. Whenever there was a chance to do something different, I usually took that as a good reason to do it, just on that principal. And the more different the better, and the bigger the better. To decide to go to London with no real job opportunities, not knowing anyone, to just ‘work and live’ was a really big deal, and it was really different to my peers who were just going off to college. And for that reason alone, I chose to do it, and for that reason alone, it turned about to be one of the best decisions of my short life. Much more recently, as of a couple of months ago, when I decided to drop out of school, leave the country I feel in love with, and go to Shanghai to pursue a startup without really knowing anyone and with flimsy language skills at best, it was pretty different, and for that reason I think it’ll turn out to be another case of something working out because it was a BIG THING done differently.

So what’s my point. Take the risk, find that BIG THING you really want to do, that you’re scared to do because it’s different. What’s the worst that’s going to happen, you delay graduation for a year, you delay your career. But what happens if it works out? It could change your life in unimaginable ways for the better. Doesn’t that sound interesting to you?