Young, Rich, and Calling Their Own Shots - 30 Under 30 | Hacker News Reader

Young, Rich, and Calling Their Own Shots - 30 Under 30

inc.com

Last year I checked out this list and was shocked to see that one of the top 30 was a girl that I had dated a few years back! If only I had just "listened" or "not made out with her best friend", I'd be set for life.

Rahim Fazal, co-founder of Involver, started his first business when he was in high school, and actually told his parents he was dealing drugs -- just so they wouldn't find out about his company and make him focus more on his schoolwork.

it's sad that our society is soo conditioned to corporate ladders... when in fact entrepreneurs are the bread and butter of our economy.

So how exactly does that work? Hey, mom, dad, I don't have time for school, I'm too busy slinging...

If he's from the neighborhood where that actually works, I very much doubt that he'd get funding from anyone. In other words, I'm calling bullshit.

But he might not need funding, depending on whether it's an Intellectual Property (IP) company or a franchise, or time hungry, manpower needed, etc etc.

So I looked further and on their about page it says he has an MBA from the top business school in Canada. Again I call bullshit, either on the story or on the MBA.

and another year has passed and I see this list, realizing I'm getting closer and closer to 30 (ok i'm not that close yet).

Does anyone else feel that it's about time for themselves to stop reading the lists and start building something?

Don't sweat it. Not that long ago, you didn't have a prayer of starting a successful business before the age of 30. The 20-year-old founder is a very recent fad.

The demographics may be shifting, but it isn't your fault.

I wouldn't call the 20 yr old founder a fad but rather a new development. I think that the new economics of distribution mean that starting a company at 20 with no cash will be a permanent option. I do think that it will take a culture shift towards entrepreneurialism to make it more prevalent though.

(full disclosure: I'm 28 with no startup)

Maybe. My guess is that the market for those companies that can be started with little or no money will become saturated (this has probably already started to happen), and the returns will fall. This will dampen some of the current frenzy for young founders.

> Rahim Fazal, co-founder of Involver, started his first business when he was in high school, and actually told his parents he was dealing drugs

Um, dealing drugs is a biz. Some dealers are owners. Some are employees. Some are contractors.

And, a lot of dealers in the owner/contractor categories are under 30.

the article mentions that "entrepreneur" studies are being added to many curriculums. this is fantastic, if the baby boomers retire fast enough there might be a chance of real capitalism returning to the USA. entrepreneurs drive every increase in standard of living.

For some reason, I find an oxymoron in phrases like "entrepreneur curriculum."

Quite. Surely we would be better improving the curriculum so that children have a better chance of learning to think critically and imaginatively about all classes of problems, rather than adding narrow vocational studies. A world where everyone is an entrepreneur in spirit may be utopian; a world where everyone is an entrepreneur in the limited sense that governments and educational systems think of them sounds utterly dystopian.

I took a new entrepreneurial module for computer scientists in my last year of university.

It was a nice idea but in truth we would have all been better off if we'd been given a link to pg's essays and been told to go home.

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