why don't more people live with their parents and try and start their own business

I feel like I'm Neo and I just took the red pill a few weeks ago when I realized that I could just try and do my own shit for a while and see if it works out instead of being a corporate slave in the Matrix.

I felt like corporate waste at my last job, I was working from home and typically only had 1-1.5 hours of work to do in the nine hour work day. it sounds nice to get paid to basically lay on your couch and check your phone every ten minutes, I won't lie - it is kind of nice - but I felt like there had to be more to life than laying on my couch and checking my phone every ten minutes. so I quit this job a couple weeks back to work on two separate business ventures.

it's only been a couples of weeks since I started working on these two businesses and I've already made a decent amount of progress on one of them - I had pretty much been floundering since I graduated from school two years ago, so it feels good to have something that is bringing some greater sense of meaning to my life bros.

take the red pill bros. move back in with your parents, reduce your monthly burn rate, break up with your girlfriend (no time for dating in entrepreneur life), create ample runway to try and chart your own course.

even if you fail (small chance you will fail given how upper echelon you are to be browsing WSO and reading this post in the first place) - you will be more likely to get a spot at HBS when compared to the PE/IB slaves who never even tried to escape the matrix.

the world is changing and you need equity if you want to be fucking bad bitches from Stanford.

 
Funniest

I basically have infinite upside and at worst less than $5k downside if I just try and do my own shit for the next YEAR and completely fail. Even if I completely fail this is basically study abroad on steroids - something badass to talk about - but with less foreign bitches.

 

if I was really pressed for cash (may end up doing this anyway) I could just try and raise VC $ for the one business venture that I am working on that is more venture scale. since I'm not financially constrained (and also because VCs won't like the fact that I'm working on two businesses at once) I think that it might make more sense to just bootstrap this bitch rather than raise VC $, but I was only making $50k at my last job. what I'm getting at is that I could probably raise VC $ and pay myself JUST AS MUCH MONEY as I made at my last job but with 100x as much upside.

 

downside is ruined career: who will hire somebody who quit their last job on a whim and wasted a year on a failed business?

infinite upside? I dunno what you can do from mom's basement without capital within a year, but good luck.

downside has like 90% probability, upside 10% probability. so probability-weighted outcome is way way worse than sitting on a couch employed, working 9h a week, and collecting $100k+ a year, while accumulating work experience on paper, building you resume, and guaranteeing yourself a bright future.

 

lol straight from the damn books... get good grades to get a good job so you can have a bright future. 

Live on the beach and do nothing if that's what you please. Maybe you don't want to sit behind a screen and would rather work with your hands.

Maybe you want to be on the beach so you work as a waiter and eventually open your own restaurant. IF you like it then that's the answer. Fk the golden handcuffs if you have all this money and all this stuff and no time to even use it...  People pay the rent on 60k/year and do just fine... Don't take me word for word, just realize there's many ways to do it. The only way to do nothing and dick around is if you already have fk u money and live off of dividends you get from real estate/stocks/business equity

I know people that make more $ setting tiles and go on to run their own companies on their own terms and not comply with the suit and tie rules or have to deal with some corporate bs politics/rules... 

There's many ways to skin the cat, but yes you should be careful planning because you don't just start a business in the basement just because and then end up making money... Also maybe it's better to give yourself a shot at making some $ in your job first and meeting some people...

Better of spending 1-2 years on the job than having a poorly executed plan and wasting a year in the basement. 

 

If you really were working only a few hours per week at your corporate slave job, why not keep that job while working on two startups while still moving back in with your parents?

Seems to me that you just gave up a high $/hr job (much higher than IB or PE from the sound of your post if you were being truthful) which wouldn’t have significantly impacted your ability to work on your startups?

 

Good question. Imo when you have a good idea you go all in on it, balls deep. Lots of people say that they are going to try and start their own shit but never end up starting it, maybe my move was a bit premature (I came up with the idea for one of these businesses mid September and didn't quit until mid November, so it wasn't the most rash move of all time), at the most it was probably one month premature, but I'd rather be on the premature side than be on the side of never quitting to work on my own shit. There is also a mental shift associated with jumping into the deep end - it feels like that is when the clock starts ticking. The progress that I have made on the one business since quitting/positive momentum that I now have affirms that I made the right decision in my mind. Also I sort of needed to quit to show potential partners/stakeholders that I am serious.

 

That “mentality” is something you convinced yourself is true. Unless that marginal increase in free time you get from quitting your job significantly helps, you only made yourself take on way more risk. You could’ve been banking all your income from corp job, applying those funds (if needed) into your business, and if all else fails you’ve got your job there. It sounds more like you wanted an excuse to leave the corporate world to start your own thing, without actually NEEDING to. Either way is fine, but you don’t need to make it sound as though they’re mutually exclusive.

 
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Throwing this out there. I was on a very good career trajectory a few years out of college and I quit to pursue the entrepreneurial route. After 2 years, the business didn't fail, but I failed personally and got out of the business. My corporate career has never recovered. I will never be as successful in the corporate ladder, or, if I ever fully get back to par it will be when I'm 45 or 50. So there is definitely career risk. If you're in high finance, you usually follow a strict career path by age/years out of college, so if you jump off the path you can't easily get back on. 

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Interesting. Could you not go do an MBA and then pivot into something new afterwards? My post was mainly aimed towards those in their early twenties. I was never on one of those fast tracked career paths.

 
famejranc

Interesting. Could you not go do an MBA and then pivot into something new afterwards? My post was mainly aimed towards those in their early twenties. I was never on one of those fast tracked career paths.

I do have two master's degrees and a very good job. But I was headed to the stratosphere--if I had just stayed the path I would have gotten the promotions I was "entitled" to on the straight and narrow path. You do x number of years and you get promoted here, one guy leaves and you are next in line, spend 3 years there and they have to promote you to Director and pay you or they'll lose you, etc. I'm not saying I regret going the entrepreneurial route because I think I would have always been super dissatisfied with a salaried job had I not tried. Just noting that there is considerable risk to young people who have a quick path up the corporate ladder.

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Memberberries

Throwing this out there. I was on a very good career trajectory a few years out of college and I quit to pursue the entrepreneurial route. After 2 years, the business didn't fail, but I failed personally and got out of the business. My corporate career has never recovered. I will never be as successful in the corporate ladder, or, if I ever fully get back to par it will be when I'm 45 or 50. So there is definitely career risk. If you're in high finance, you usually follow a strict career path by age/years out of college, so if you jump off the path you can't easily get back on. 

I went through almost the exact same thing. In some sense I was delusional how ‘easy’ it would be to be an entrepreneur and generate new customers and increase sales. I went from having a very pigeonholed role in a corporation to wearing all the hats, including sales, which I suck at. I definitely learned a lot and that free feeling from the corporate world was very nice.

My interest initially was to create large scale paintings (abstract) for custom orders for people. I sold a few, but could not generate a solid sales pipeline when initially I thought I would constantly be gaining new customers. This became my weakest point of the business and I became very aware of that from the beginning.

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee
 

How is being an artist = entrepreneur? In some sense maybe yeah if you twist it very hard in your head, but at that point is it really art that you are creating if you are catering to peoples taste ie creating what sells. So okay yeah you are a business if you see it that way but isn't the point of doing art self expression?

 

Why don't more people start their own businesses? Most of them either can't (can't afford to quit the job) or don't want to (career risk / opportunity cost or lack of interest in pursuing that). Most people don't work 1-2 hours per day in a cushy corporate job - you're coming from a privileged position.

Why doesn't everyone just fly private all the time?? You save tons of time and it's more enjoyable!

 

I understand that I am coming from a privileged position but would reckon that many people on this forum could go live with their parents for a year and try and start a business and have enough money saved up to do that. I am grateful to be able to live with my parents but I think that flying private is not a good analogy. It's not like I'm so out of touch to not understand that some people simply won't be able to live at home with their parents, I'm just saying that many people probably could do that if they wanted to so why don't they is the question.

 

Similar situation. I started a brick & mortar retail business while still working my finance job (50 hours a week). I spend weekends at the shop and spend my evenings negotiating with vendors, making purchases, etc. Business is on pace for ~300-350k revenue year 1 with 50% profit margins. I'm deciding between opening more locations or sticking it out with my single location and still work at my day-job. Feels good milking both paths right now because I feel like I'm cheating the system, but it's tough deciding which one is the better path to focus on

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good for you bro. you are much more successful than I am so far - I am just getting these two businesses started that I am working on. let's try and talk it out a little bit in terms of trying to decide which path to focus on, maybe we can help out some. what are the pros/cons to quitting your job to focus on your business?

 

Most people I would say are either afraid of the lack of a basically guaranteed paycheck, or may not have productive and efficient enough skills to remain in business for long.

One thing I have thought of though, and I'm sure virtually everyone on WSO can do it, is if you have a friend that's an entrepreneur, is becoming their CFO. You're in Excel everyday anyway, might as well get some equity while you're at it. You don't have to be the guy with the vision per se, but it would be a really good opportunity to witness firsthand how value is really created and accounted for. It would inevitably sharpen your accounting knowledge and corporate finance understanding, and then if the business takes off, would be a great way to also learn and hone valuation methods. I feel like that could be a really fun thing if done right, but obviously not without stress.

Quant (ˈkwänt) n: An expert, someone who knows more and more about less and less until they know everything about nothing.
 

getting laid is simply a distraction from the grindset. sigma males only have sex under prostitution circumstances where they are the prostitute - preferably with other high status men for networking purposes.

 

I feel like a good middle ground is to join a well-funded Series A company, with experienced previously successful founders as an early employee and some product market fit.

You get:

1) Paid pretty well if it's a well funded company. Should be 100k+ for junior, non-entry level resources. It could still be a pay cut from big tech, IB/PE, or MBB consulting, but you won't be eating ramen. You also have more potential upside from equity.

2) Learn on the ground floor from someone more experienced

3) Build connections

If the start-up does well, in 3-7 years you'll have enough money to retire and the connections to raise millions for your own venture. If the start-up fails, it's quite possible to soft-exit to a higher paying company.

 

I think you're missing the point about starting a business, it's not really about $ if you're only looking at the expense associated with living alone. What is living with your parents going to net 12-20k in rent a year? Is that significant in terms of start-up capital for a business? Not really, if you are so sure that this is a problem and your business idea is sound, just take a personal loan or better yet use someone else's money (FF&F). 

I've worked on a lot of product launches/development, there are far more challenges/hurdles associated with starting a business than $. Don't get me wrong, plenty of businesses go defunct because of lack of funds (only need to burn cash for a year more or so and would be successful) but lack of money is a pretty straight forward problem to solve. 

 

Money is the validation of the strong possibility to create future value.

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee
 

Please do not care about what strangers on WSO are saying. Do what you want to do even if it's damn difficult.

I personally know a couple of entrepreneurs my age or my parents' age (all my/family friends). Some of them had ups and downs, a lot, but none of them gave up.

One guy from a no-name university is a co-founder of a small art design firm --- he doesn't know shit about art design --- and now has ~8mn/year in revenue with a 35% net profit margin. High for this sector I believe.

One of my father's friend failed big ~3 years ago and owed about $15mn in personal debt, not company debt. He recovered from that. Didn't choose to end his life or go back to corporate or anything. 

Persistency is Key
 

Thanks for the comment. I actually know a guy from my high school who started a marketing agency a while back probably not knowing shit about how to run a marketing agency but kept at it and now a couple years later it seems like he has a successful marketing agency.

 

Because I wanted to go balls deep on my own shit. It's not like I was working from 8 - 9:30 and then could just fuck off for the rest of the day, I had shit that would come in sporadically so still had to be 'on' for all of the nine hour work day.

 

all bad advice in my opinion. having a chill job that pays well is fantastic - leaving such spot is silly. moving with parents is pathetic. leaving a girlfriend is also kinda dumb. HBS will cost you $200k. no guarantee you'll get admitted after you quit your job and if your business idea doesn't work out. and Stanford bitches are way worse than state schools bitches. and people who are slaving away in IB, can retire in their 30s and never work a day in their life if they want. you'll be paying off your HBS debt when they're retiring.

 

give me a couple months and then we can evaluate how silly I am. too early to call me stupid for making the move imo. you risk averse fuckers really think it was good for me to only work 10 hours per week at some huge corporation in a job that I hated with poor upward mobility no learning opportunities and ultimately working towards nothing, just so that I can 'build my resume' and 'guarantee myself a bright future'. dude how the fuck am I guaranteeing myself a brighter future by working some mind numbing job like that with poor upside, 'build your resume' and 'guarantee yourself a bright future' are just massive copes for trying to rationalize why a shit situation actually isn't shit in your mind. I'm not some dumb anti-work person I actually enjoyed my first job out of school for the most part which was at a startup and it was a fucking grind. there are boundless opportunities for people to find a way to make money outside of a corporate job, you don't need to be a fucking puzzle in someone else's puzzle piece slot. a lot of the guys founding companies are not some fucking god tier business geniuses they just fucking had an idea and tried to start a company. thebrofessor what do you think oh wise one.

 

while you seat on your position, your experience is growing on paper, so you're becoming a more desirable, experienced candidate. if you don't like perspectives at the firm, you can leverage headhunters and try to move elsewhere. about learning, I personally think that you don't necessarily need to learn a lot at work. you learned stuff at school. now it's time to use what you learned. in terms of working towards nothing, we're all working towards nothing. nothing really matters in a global scheme of things. we just create products and services and convince others to buy them even if they might not need them in exchange for products and services that we don't need. it's all just a waste of life. just go through this grind, save money, invest, and escape this bullshit. no need to waste your whole life trying to build some business or something. just my opinion.

 

I agree with your pursuit of independence and your assumption of risks, I disagree with not having a girlfriend, life is pointless without love and you will be less happy if you are unbalanced

if it were me, I'd find a career that didn't demand a lot from me mentally but then incubate some side hustles while I had a steady salary to pay the bills with, that way I'm never at risk of being destitute, once one of the hustles shows promise I'd quit my job

i frame every decision in terms of upside and downside. Downside here is a survivable failure, you go back to workforce with good experience, maybe go to business school, but it's not a fatal failure and way more survivable without responsibilities like kids and a mortgage. I'm all for risk taking, provided it's calculated and viewed through this lens

 

this is pretty much how I always felt. there are places where you can find business partners who may have ideas already and may be looking for a cofounder with a complimentary skillset. check out the y combinator cofounder matching program. if you don't know how to code you should probably know how to sell or be willing to try and learn. not every business needs to be a sexy software company though btw.

 

Because some people like to fuck on the regular and those who have started their own businesses don't have the time or the mind to write novels on WSO 

 

Luck plays a big role. Interpret this in a deeper way. Where you're born, your family situation, and etc. 

Both my cousins live in the suburbs of NYC (they're around 22) their father was an immigrant with no HS diploma and so entrepreneurship was the ONLY way to not be homeless. In short, they started businesses that net around $300K in cash annually. My cousin drives a 2020 BMW M8 and spends about 10K on bottle service at clubs. They would never ever join a corporation, they hate that life style. My 3rd cousin is the son of a wealthy oil & gas entrepreneur worth over $100M (no HS diploma) but their family are terrible human beings.... Very sad actually. 

Then there's me. I went to a non-target with a 3.3 GPA. But I am working on 1 very large deal in CRE (could make me  $1M if goes well). I personally don't wan to work at a large firm but will If I have to. 
All in all, entrepreneurship awards me with things I really want (non material) and I seen it first hand in my family. Thus I plan to take the risk and go down this path. 
Many people in the wold are different, it's why not everyone will be a employee or business owner. It's all relative and so just focus on what you want and can control. 

 

The M8 is sick. M8 competition super sick.

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee
 

If you ask any parent, their wish for their child is almost always for them to be happy. Unfortunately, we spend too much of our time trying to make that happen . So I quit this job a couple weeks back to work on two separate business ventures. it's only been a couples of weeks since I started working.

Cannabis Equipment Financing refers to a loan used to purchase business-related equipment, such as a restaurant oven, vehicle or copy machine. Our HEF Finance will work to get you a quick approval on virtually any type of Cannabis Equipment Financing equipment. They will then find the payment option that's best for you.
 

No offence OP, but I think you're dramatically simplifying this. The fact is most people who go into finance are intelligent, hard working people who want a relatively risk-averse way to make a relatively good salary - this mindset doesn't generally translate well into starting your own business. Of course there are lots of stories of ex-finance people setting up very successful businesses, but you have to be mindful of survivor bias here, i.e. you don't hear about the hoards of people who flamed out.

Also secondly, what business? Are you talking about setting up a clothing line or a ride-sharing app or a crypto startup? Any of these options are fields where there is already very stiff competition. So the question is what competitive edge will you really have?

The reason I ask this goes back to my first point - because finance tends to attract risk-averse people, they likely won't be "trailblazers" in setting up their own business. For instance, 5 years ago anyone quitting their finance job to go into the crypto world (set up a fund or exchange) would have likely been widely ridiculed. Now however I see regularly on Linkedin guys quitting their PE or IB jobs (including a few IB MDs) to join crypto startups. The question though is - why now? The answer is because it's now popular/trendy so they see it as the next big thing - the problem is the time to get into crypto would have been 5 years ago when it didn't appeal to them. I mean no offence but what can the average VP in IB know/offer to the crypto world that others haven't done already?

In fact I've already seen on Linkedin a couple of guys who left PE jobs to set up their own business/join a very early startup recently come back to PE/IB after only a year or two - evidently having their own business didn't work out. To be fair they were able to get jobs in finance again so you could argue they didn't really lose out, but then they've also wasted a year or two probably not earning much and have had to then slink back to a lesser known/smaller IB or PE firm.

 

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"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee
 

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"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee

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