And if you require a carrot that takes you from, say, $2M to $2.5M salary, maybe re-consider what motivates you and try to find something more intrinsic to the work & company itself.
Not that I disagree with you, I just think the numbers don't add up to be called massive.
Who are you to tell someone their motivations are wrong? I agree with you for myself wholeheartedly but I'm not about to go dictate to people what they should be motivated by. How incredibly arrogant.
It's very common but do we have any proof?
Surely, personal circumstances are very important if you are going to try to start a business.
There is psychological circumstances like: did you grow up in a family or an environment where the idea of start a business was present?
And more practical like: Do you have technical abilities that you can sell if your project fail? Do you or your parents, wife, etc. have money that will stop your fall if the project goes wrong?
Was really Bezos or Gates or Page really "taking a risk"? And I mean a real risk.
Anyway, even if we, as a society, want to reward the "job creators", we probably don't want to live in winner take all world.
I'm curious about that statistic. A lot of these business could be hobby or other casual enterprises, tax avoidance schemes, and doomed businesses started by naive people. It doesn't mean a whole lot without some more context.
>Imagine taking a job where you had to pay for your office, office supplies, computer, and every thing else out of pocket.
Become a teacher!
>...that is a social discussion.
Social factors aren't irrelevant. People behave differently based upon socio-economic incentives. Not just entrepreneurs, either; take two engineers, one comes from a family with "fuck you" money, the other is a first generation college graduate. They both have started their own families and have young children at home. Now, imagine how their reactions might differ when placed in various ethical dilemmas.
All models are wrong, but some are useful. That particular stat covers a pretty good cross section of legitimate small businesses. Some small businesses may be a cover for an underground marinara sauce operation used by the mafia to funnel dollars to a dog fighting operation..... Sure we could muddy it up more, but I don't think that stat is all that malicious or disingenuous.
> Become a teacher!
This claim does seem to be a bit disingenuous and exaggerated. Sure teachers cover an unfair amount of supplies and get paid very little. Do they really rent their classrooms, buy their own computers, and pay for 100% of everything out of pocket?
> Social factors aren't irrelevant.
My post was refuting the claim that entrepreneurs aren't taking real risk. Granted if you come from a wealthy family you aren't taking as much risk starting a business as someone taking a small business loan. I still contend that the risk to an individual (relative to them-self, not others) is greater when starting a business than taking a job.
It was exaggerated a bit!
>Do they really rent their classrooms,
Of course not, but increasingly, my own resources are being put to use on behalf of my / my employer's students. Furthermore, remuneration in my field is easily several times what it is in education; and I think that's true for a lot of teachers. Sure, there are other benefits, but the pay is poor, approaching minimal, and that's not going to get you the best teachers.
>buy their own computers
Often enough, yes.
> and pay for 100% of everything out of pocket?
Far, far too much out of pocket.
> I was saying that entrepreneurs take significant personal and financial risks and there is a high rate of attrition for even good businesses.
I agree, and I think it's may just be a nasty feature of our country's demographics and the law of supply and demand.
I'm reminded of a post from a few years ago (I think I saw it here) examining someone's observation that a lot of engineering types were packing up and moving to Germany to start their company because failure would mean less financial hardship (that's not a great summary of the article). Here is an article in a similar vein (vane?). http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/10/think-we...
Only a small number of bootstrapped companies (few of whom are represented on Hacker News) are risking their own money, and even then only the brave (or foolish) push it to the point where they can't sustain themselves if the business fails.
Also some business owners do leverage some retirement savings when starting a business. It's a pretty good way to get low interest money. They can sustain if things fail, but they certainly feel it if they fail.
Kind of interesting to think about what the negative consequences actually would have been for Bezos if Amazon couldn't survive the dotcom bubble.
The founder may have lost more money, but he had more money to gamble with. The employee does not, and losing his personal income stream is probably equally or more damaging to him.
Oh yes, I forgot about the masses of un-wealthy people who have equity.