Why does the WSO community seem to have little interest in working for themselves?
as the title reads - I feel like the wso community is so focused on being MDs/Partners at name brand firms. why do so few aspire to create something of their own? work for themselves? not be a cog in someone else’s game plan?
Starting your own business is risky & most members on WSO are risk-averse
capital intensive and need connections to start a business while the path allows you to make connections and provides a layout of accumulating upper middle class or potentially even upper class wealth in a 8-10 year period
to add on to other commentors most of us are pretty young so starting our own venture with a decent chance of success is relatively far away.
like for example i'd love to start my own fund in the future but i dont even have a job yet so the conversations to be had are going to be much more relevant and fruitful if they're focused on getting a job instead of a pipe dream i might not even have in 10 years when it might start coming to fruition
then you add on that business creation is at an all time low, theres not much you can expect
I think WSO has a skew against Entrepreneurship for a few of reasons:
Investment Banking is a very risk-averse role. It provides great pay and career optionality at the expense of poor work-life balance. Contrast that with Entrepreneurship, a career path that is incredibly risky (not paying yourself a salary for years, etc). Many of the people on this site don't have the risk appetite to take that on, especially when they're competitive for jobs that pay 6 figures straight out of school. The ceiling for upside potential with Entrepreneurship is definitely higher, but the floor is significantly lower than banking.
The majority of users on this site are high school/college students who have yet to enter the workforce. As such, it is a lot easier to fantasize and talk about Banking's clear career progression in comparison to Entrepreneurship, which is a lot more ambiguous.
To echo my point above about the majority of users being high school/college students, that really affects how you view IB v. Entrepreneurship. Some students still view IB as this sexy, bottles-and-models industry. To what extent that is true, I'll leave up to debate, but they won't view the industry through rose-tinted glasses once they're up at 3 AM for the 4th day in a row, doing work that the incompetent MBA Associate dropped on their desk.
I know that I'm just one data point, but I personally have aspirations to try and open my shop at some point in the future. But that's a long way off...and I don't even know what asset class it would be.
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