The Anatomy of an Entrepreneur (2009) | Hacker News Reader

The Anatomy of an Entrepreneur (2009)

kauffman.org

148 pointscharlieirish106 comments

Having a supporting spouse, a couple of kids and a mortgage are enormously motivating so this should come as no surprise. My first real business success happened roughly a year after my first child was born and I think that the biggest factor there was that having a kid made me realize that playtime was over. Nothing tells you to get serious as much as a tiny person that is utterly dependent on you for their every need.

The HN illusion is that all successful people are in their low 20's and make billions (ok, that's a bit much but you get the idea), the reality is that they are the outliers and that your chances of finding success by some measure is higher later in life.

But those are not the average applicants to YC.

Beware of seeing everything through a HN/YC colored lens, there is a far larger world out there with an untold number of paths to success, HN is a great community, YC an awesome program if you fit their target demographic but these are not at all the only options.

"this should come as no surprise"? To me, the 60% figure seems like an invertible fact.[1]

Imagine the article said, "75% of successful entrepreneurs are single." People would post comments similar to yours, but with other rationalizations for why the fact is true. "This isn't surprising. Single people have more free time." "This shouldn't come as a surprise. Single people don't have to worry about providing for a family." "This doesn't surprise me. Single people can take more risks."

We like to project an unsurprised, unperturbed, and confident attitude. But thinking "I knew it all along" can be dangerous.

The number of hindsight-biased comments do surprise me a little. I expect more from our community. The world is complicated, and our minds can't model it accurately all the time. Paradoxically, we should expect to be surprised.

1. See http://lesswrong.com/lw/im/hindsight_devalues_science/

> The number of hindsight-biased comments do surprise me a little.

We all comment from our own experience, and as such these are anecdotal bits of evidence rather than hard data. Not every HN post starts out with a double blind study over a statistically significant portion of the population with splits per level of affluence and further splits to offset for geographic diversity.

> I expect more from our community.

Sorry to disappoint you.

A community is the sum of its individuals, and slightly larger than that if you're lucky with the communities that you are part of. As such the way to improve on the status quo is to lead by example.

Looking around me at the 100's of business people that I have contact with the vast majority (much larger than the 60% quoted here) of people with some level of success is in a relationship and a not-so-vast majority (but still substantial) have kids and are living a relatively steady life.

For me the young kid that strikes it big is the exception, and as such I am not particularly surprised by this outcome.

It would be much more surprising to me if the opposite were the case, your '75% of successful entrepreneurs are single' example would really turn my head because it goes directly against my personal experience.

That's not hindsight, it is just reasoning from available data and I see absolutely nothing wrong with that.

We should expect to be surprised, but that does not mean that we have to actively twist available data so that we're surprised all the time.

Sometimes a result is simply what is to be expected and I firmly believe this is one of those. But I can see how to some people here this comes as a surprising result because of the echo chamber aspect of being focused solely on a single community, especially one that contains a pretty substantial bias because of the company sponsoring that community.

It's not the time that's missing for most people it's the serious motivation. Having more people who depend on you is a huge external motivation factor.

I love lesswrong but don't think his comment is hindsight biased. I do not have kids and me and my wife do not want kids anytime soon just because we enjoy playtime and having less responsibility and more freedom.

>We like to project an unsurprised, unperturbed, and confident attitude. But thinking "I knew it all along" can...

For anyone who's interested in these topic and how people behave when facts are presented in one way or another, take a look at this book. In my opinion, it's completely worth reading this book.

http://www.amazon.com/Everything-Is-Obvious-Common-Sense/dp/...

This is actually the exact opposite of what I thought. To me people with families will take less risk. Extra pressure and time constraints put by supporting the family will cause bad judgement (putting cash flow before long term success, focusing to consultancy to survive etc.)

Not to mention in my experience many geeks will fail under money pressure rather than flourish when it comes to developing a project.

Bad judgment can happen on either side.

Being cash flow positive means you can survive for as long as you want and you don't have to depend so much on investments, which are a ticking time bomb. Investments should be taken for quick growth, but if you depend on investments for survival, or if you don't actually need quick growth, then you're fucked.

>To me people with families will take less risk.

But to me, this is the biggest myth of all: starting a business has risks to be sure. As does planning your career path in the corporate world. Your skill could get automated or outsourced. You could get cut at a critical point in your career.

There is no "safe" path these days. There are paths that seem to have less risk, but you can approach business in a way that limits your exposure easier than you can do that with a job (most jobs require an investment of 40+ hours per week). I think Patio is an example of this.

"The HN illusion"

Rather, it is perhaps a filter in part created by a Silicon Valley mythology. It's reflection on HN is in large part based on YC's template for success, which in turn draws upon the arc of Graham's own experience.

HN is directed at a more specific species of entrepreneurship than that of the study. The exit strategy of a defense manufacturer is decidedly different than that of the companies YC tends to fund.

YC doesn't have a target demographic. It has a target company type, described here: http://paulgraham.com/growth.html

That's one way to look at it but you are skewing towards a certain demographic by putting up a whole pile of demands before the application process has even begun that rules out a large portion of the potential applicants.

The net effect of that is that you will find in your pool of applicants a dis-proportionally high number of young single males and single females from a limited geographic region.

Whether that is cause or effect isn't really all that important, it's just a fact and if that increases the chances for success of the companies you fund then so much the better.

I don't understand people's issue with this statistic. It's not implying causality of any form.

It's simply saying: "the common idea that the only successful entrepreneurs are workaholic young singles working days and nights is actually a misconception. Proof: 60% of successful entrepreneurs are married with children."

That's not bad statistics, it's completely helpful, if nothing else for confirming a suspicion you may have had anyways.

Bad statistics would be saying "so in order to be more successful as an entrepreneur, get married and have a kid."

I would be cautious about drawing conclusions about startups from this study. Startups are such a small subset of newly founded businesses that unless a study is very careful about how they select their sample, they're likely to get mostly ordinary businesses. And judging from what the people who did this study say about how they selected their sample (see page 8), it sounds like that's what happened. They say they "extracted randomized records by region." Randomization is not the way to select a population who by definition are outliers.

Actually, the title I saw before the change (and now) said "Entrepreneur", not startup founders. I don't think it was misleading, though it's true that people could be substituting "Founder" for "Entrepreneur" in their heads.

>Randomization is not the way to select a population who by definition are outliers.

How should the study have been conducted? It is not obvious to me why selecting a random sample is not representative.

I wasn't suggesting they should have conducted the study differently, just that if they sampled businesses generally rather than startups specifically, their conclusions about entrepreneurs don't necessarily apply to startup founders.

60% had atleast one child when they were founding their first company, but that doesnt tell if they were still happily married after a few stressfull years of running their companies.

I've run two companies, have 3 children and have been happily married for 15 years. It wholly depends who you and your spouse are and how much time you put aside for your family. Your family are more important than any business venture - that's the key to success. Also don't base any relationship on financial benefits - many a time we've had literally nothing to this point we had to eat on 12GBP a week for a couple of months and put every bill off and that's not been a problem because we're good company for each other without any tangible items to amuse us.

That is superb and i didnt want to imply that its not possible with my comment! There are a lot of factors in play and it can all work out very well!

That being said, i started my first real company when i was 6 years into a strong relationship. 2 years later the relationship is gone and the company failed to catch on. I dont regret it and am still motivated to start new things, if anything this only made me stronger but it was very tough going through it!

The flip side of that is how many non-married founders crash and burn because they didn't have a supportive, safe place to go to outside the company.

I'm not married - but my partner and I have been together for more than 17 years now. I don't think I'd have started our first company without her support and pushing. I definitely wouldn't have started my second after our first one crashed and burned!

Stress happens in all relationships. For me anyway the stress of starting two businesses, and having one fail horribly, doesn't get into the top three most stressful events of the last 17 years. It barely makes the top five ;-)

This is off topic, but I'm just curious. If you've been together for 17 years now, why are you not married?

This is not a criticism/flame/whatever, just curious.

This is off topic, but I'm just curious. If you've been together for 17 years now, why are you not married?

Many reasons ;-)

* We're both atheists - so we don't think any god(s) are going to be annoyed

* We live in the UK so, at this point, living together without being married isn't frowned upon socially - not by anybody we care about anyway. There's also the slightly weird thing that at this point people just assume we are married unless the topic is brought up specifically.

* Neither of us are particular fans of getting up in front of large groups of people so the whole "wedding day" concept isn't much of an attraction. Quite the opposite if anything.

* No kids (by choice) so don't need to factor in that as an issue.

* The whole needing state/peer approval for a relationship seems slightly weird to both of us. Our commitment is personal and private and doesn't need any external validation thank-you-very-much.

* Personally we see staying together without marriage as a more positive statement about the state of our relationship. We're together because we want to be together - not because a divorce is too much effort.

The only hassles have been around stuff related to medical care for relatives and each other (a few idiots are a little too strict about the definitions of family and need paperwork), along with a mild tax hit since we don't get the married couples allowance. At some point soonish we'll have to sort out some of the legal stuff around investments/wills, etc. - but most of that's already been dealt with with.

If the UK's Civil Partnership arrangement was available to straight couples we might have gone for that - just to make the legal stuff simpler, but is isn't so we didn't.

TL;DR - Why should we? ;-)

If we set aside religious and cultural reasons, there are often good legal and financial reasons to get married.

I'm not familiar with UK law, but in the U.S. the main advantage is that the legal system is predisposed to offer spouses a whole raft of rights and powers that, absent marriage, need to be individually constructed via some complex legal maneuvering.

You don't need to tell anyone you're married. Just schedule time at city hall and grab a couple of bystanders (or close friends) as witnesses.

You don't need to tell anyone you're married. Just schedule time at city hall and grab a couple of bystanders (or close friends) as witnesses.

1) It goes against stuff we both believe in - so no.

2) We've got a handle on the legal stuff. In the UK anyway it's not that big a deal for the way we live our lives (see http://www.adviceguide.org.uk/england/relationships_e/relati... if you're curious)

3) Dude! I've been with a fantastic sexy woman I love for more than 17 years! She presumably quite likes me too. If you think for a second that I'm going to do anything that has the slightest chance of messing that up you are sadly mistaken ;-)

Sorry, I addressed your last question as more of a general question--why should "anyone" get married, if they don't care about all the trappings.

I don't really think that you should get married. My default on these sorts of personal issues is always "you should do whatever you want and believe in." :-)

Thanks for the link; I'll take a look. In the U.S. there are some legal rights that are only available to spouses. (Which is why the fight for the legal recognition of same-sex marriage is so important.)

As someone who's also been in a long-term, committed relationship (12 years) and is not married it is weird to me that people seem to view marriage as the inevitable outcome of coupling. I have similar views as the OP explains below and would add, to me, marriage seems like a great institution when women had no other choice (i.e. no access to education/self-sufficiency). In the modern world, aside from the religious angle, it seems somewhat anachronistic. That said if people are attracted to it they should totally do it, but gazing on people that have made a different choice and asking them to explain themselves, as if marriage were some natural state of affairs, is odd, to me.

I live in a country where living together while not married is very much frowned upon. Those aren't my views, but they are the ones of the society which surrounds me. Therefore I'm just curious about lifestyles which aren't even possible here because I haven't met any people who lead them.

I am not asking anyone to explain themselves, I tried to make that clear and certainly did not mean to offend anyone(sorry if I have). I was just asking out of curiosity, the way you would inquire about anything which is out of the ordinary with respect to your every day experiences(and in the society I grew up in, this is very much out of the ordinary -- That doesn't mean I'm making any kind of value judgement, it's just a fact).

No offence taken by me - just in case you were worried ;)

When it comes to positive psychology married people with kids feel less satisfied with life, but other factors that also contribute to happiness such as meaning and purpose are increased in this group of people and make up for that.

When it comes to positive psychology married people with kids feel less satisfied with life

[citation needed]

This is one http://www.publicaffairs.ubc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/I...

The other one is cited in this book (I read it there first) http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1857883292/ref=as_li_ss_tl?...

Here is a not so scientific national poll about this http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2135843/Children-liv...

Interesting - thank you. Especially the three studies in the first paper.

The discussion on moderators on the first study is interesting since it shows that it's not a universal truth - but significantly moderated by age, marital status and sex. For example:

"Finally, age significantly moderated the link between parenthood and life satisfaction. Simple effects analyses revealed that young parents (ages 17-25) were less satisfied with their lives than their childless counterparts (b = -0.39, p < .001); mid-range age parents (ages 26-62) were more satisfied than their childless peers (b = 0.42, p < .001); and older parents (ages 63 and older) did not differ from older non-parents (b = 0.16, p = .29)."

The discussion on recall bias is interesting to - nice to see that mentioned.

US only population too. Would be interested to see how that goes across cultures.

This is in-line with my own experience as a 37 year old founder (married, one child).

The biggest hurdle is "lack of willingness or ability to take risks" and the biggest advantage is "Professional networks". Most often, this is reversed if you are a young founder.

The survey included 5 high growth industries: aerospace, defense, computing, electronics, and health care. For me, personally, the only industry I am concerned about is computing. Including datapoints from outside my industry muddies the water. ...making it difficult for me to extract anything useful out of this study.

For example, starting an aerospace or defence business might be easy if you have the right contacts - just win a government contract. ...something which is probably more likely to happen for older married men.

Does it really make a difference anyway? If it were 70% for the computer field, would you rush out and marry someone and get her pregnant as soon as possible? Or if it were better to be single, would you sit your wife and kids down and explain to them that to maximize your chances of success, they're being "downsized"?

While there are differences, aren't there also massive similarities?

These are largely industries that require skill and talent as much or more than they require physical assets, they're all things where building up experience is likely to have benefits and so on.

Looking at what happens in computing is useful, but it feels like we should be saying if someone can be a successful entrepreneur in healthcare under set of circumstances X, why CAN'T someone in that same set of circumstances be successful in IT.

We need to be careful not be too insular, not to buy into our own myths (that of the teenage genius founder for instance), and not assume that we're too different or too special, as I don't think those things serve us well.

My thoughts exactly, if we would focus only on computing industry than I'm pretty sure the avarage age would be much lower, and because the avarage age of getting married is near 30 (at least in US), the number of married entrepreneurs, let alone with children, would be also significantly lower. Another thing is that industries such as aerospace or electronics are much harder to break through, you need much much more experience, and the knowledge isn't as easily obtainable as for computing.

I see a lot of folks jumping to explain away this article. My opinion is that a lot of the HN crowd believe that they are disruptors, bucking the trends. As a 35 year old married guy in Houston, reading HN tends to give me the idea that if I'm not in my early 20s and willing to drop it all and move to SF and work for at least 1/2 of market rate for a funded company building a social product that focuses on traction as opposed to revenue ... then my ship has sailed. Articles like this are a nice reality check.

Kauffman wonk reports make me want to stab my eyes out.

But while you're here learn about the awesome entrepreneur who created the Kauffman Foundation, which is now the largest organization dedicated to the advancement of entrepreneurship ($2bn endowment) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ewing_Marion_Kauffman

I suspect there's no causation relationship between the two.

I remember reading some time ago (no link, sorry) that older, more experienced, wealthier and better connected entrepreneurs will on average outperform the stereotypical 19 year old college dropout that we on HN love to talk about. It just so happens that as you move towards the 40s and 50s you are very likely to get married and have children, but they themselves are not the cause of your success.

If you can not make a relationship works. How the hell are you going to be able to direct people, or drive a project?

I recall stories of companies who refuse to hire single men as salesmen for this reason.

Single men are also less likely to have a mortgage and other family expenses they are beholden to that can be used as leverage.

Really? Like a relationship is something a guy can just - bang! - 'make work'. Good luck 'directing' your SO or 'driving' your marriage like a project. I feel for both of you.

Despite popular notions of 'being married to one's own startup', apples to oranges is not even close to comparing relationship to startups.

How is it related ? do you have sex with all the people you work with or what ? there is a difference between professional relationships and personnal ones , if you cant tell , i'm sorry for your family.

Don't sorry for my family. Be happy for my clients. I treat them as family.

The biggest challenge in marriage is managing the external expectations. The shape of a marriage is strongly defined by social pressures and there is little room for personal problem solving within that framework.

Business, on the other hand, is all about unique problem solving. Eccentric ideas that lead to success are celebrated and considered genius. It would be quite easy to believe someone could thrive in this environment while failing in marriage.

Most Entrepreneurs are married - i guess is because they tend to marry first(the teen-age effect) and later on in life start up with some business; also i guess they have successful business(60% as above) as they tend to devote more time to business than family later in life.

I would seriously like to know:

1) How many entrepreneurs start up a serious business first and then get married - Do they prefer girl-friends over a wife ???

2) Having got married - are they able to devote the same time to their business

3) Are they able to devote equally good time for children, wife and parents(when they fall sick)

4) Are children, wife and parents happy with these entrepreneurs

5) Do these Entrepreneurs always have a supporting wife and supporting children OR are have their wives and children compromised on their own personal life for the success of the entrepreneur

Professional life and Personal life are two different things.. when you combine both; they together make up "Life" - or what accounts to as "Time of one's life"; and when one talks about both together; what one implicitly is talking about is one's "Happiness".

6) So, After 25+ years into entrepreneurship does the entrepreneur repent on having wasted life(time) OR is really happy thinking only about their business achievements.

7) How many such entrepreneurs having 25+ years of experience are truly happy with their professional life as well as personal life(wife, children, parents, friends). do we have any such numbers.

Here is the document (2009) they are summarizing: http://www.kauffman.org/uploadedfiles/researchandpolicy/thes...

That would be more meaningful if they provided us the anatomy of entrepreneurs in general, successful and unsuccessful. Then we would be able to find out if there is a correlation (not causality) between being married with children and being a successful entrepreneur.

> Nearly 70 percent were married when they became entrepreneurs, and nearly 60 percent had at least one child, challenging the stereotype of the entrepreneurial workaholic with no time for a family.

The question is if that's more or less than the national average.

> challenging the stereotype of the entrepreneurial workaholic with no time for a family.

Researcher's personal bias? Someone can have a family and yet have no time for them.

"Although only 51 percent of American adults are currently married, 72 percent have been married at least once." [1]

Tricky number. Roughly three out of four of people get married, but as we know half of those marriages end in divorce. The number of entrepreneurial americans is "somewhere in there" (within +-1 std) so I think it's safe to call it a push.

About 0.34% of people start businesses, a small enough sample that it's hard to draw any sweeping conclusions [2]. It's probably safe to say that starting a business doesn't have a serious impact on the prior or posterior probability of marriage.

[1] http://www.livescience.com/17462-record-number-americans-unm...

[2] http://www.inc.com/news/articles/201103/entrepreneurial-rate...

> but as we know half of those marriages end in divorce.

I'm not sure that's true actually. My feeling is that there are "serial divorces" who have 5+ failed marriages and drive the numbers way up.

40% of Successful Entrepreneurs are NOT Married with Children

Just because you have wife and kids doesn't mean much.

How much quality time can you afford to spend with them if you are trying to build a successful business at the same time?

What I found interesting was: "Founders tended to be middle-aged—40 years old on average—when they started their first companies.".

I always thought that starting a new company was driven by the fire of youth, but it seems like it is mid-life crisis that may also be responsible in many cases.

How much quality time can you afford to spend with them if you are trying to build a successful business at the same time?

The flip side of that is that older folk are more likely to have had the time to learn the most effective ways to manage their own time, had the opportunity to get the kinks out of managing people, delegating tasks, hiring people, etc. Makes it a lot easier to get the space for quality time (and, indeed, realise that quality time is necessary for you to be the most productive in anything but the very short term).

So, for me anyway, the answer is "quite a bit thank you" (Helped by the fact that we run the business together ;-)

I always thought that starting a new company was driven by the fire of youth, but it seems like it is mid-life crisis that may also be responsible in many cases.

Or maybe it's having more experience in judging whether something is likely to be successful or not. I was much less nervous starting a new company this year than I was the last time in 1999. Large chunks of the fear go away with the addition of experience.

> [...] nearly 60 percent had at least one child, challenging the stereotype of the entrepreneurial workaholic with no time for a family.

Well, this has to be compared with the number of people in their 40 that are married w/ children. And I wouldn't be surprised if this number was above 60%.

I find it hilarious that all of these articles feel they need to explain how to be successful, and how to grow a startup.

Nobody wants to believe that the real secret is absolute determination, dedication, and a lot of hard work. It just can't be that simple!

I think the correlation is like this:

It is more older than younger entrepreneurs that have reached success and are considered successful. And we know that it is more older that are married and have children.

BTW: I am 30, happily married and with 2 children.

That is really a good news for every married man, mostly for those who think, life is more thought after marriage.

For anyone reading this saying "That's not me" just remember... YOU ARE NOT A STATISTIC

Isn't that the average for the general population? I guess entrepreneurs are human too.

Only 60%? 60% isn't really that high of a number to make a point here.

Only 60%? 60% isn't really that high of a number to make a point here.

Depends on what the reader's preconceptions are :-)

I know I encounter a fair share of idiots who think I'm too old to start a new company in the tech sector because I'm in my forties.

I need a child. Anyone got a spare one for me? :-)

Does this also apply to women?

adopt me please :D

What percentage of people who are not successful entrepreneurs but fit the other criteria i.e. middle or upper-class background, 40 years-old on average, high academic performance, are married and with children? Is it more or less than 60%?

Substantially less. Four year degrees alone upper bound that at about 20~25% of the population, depending on what age cohort you use. As you add additional constraints the intersection only ever gets smaller.

The question could be phrased better, but the gist is: (number of married with children) / (number of members) in the population of ``middle or upper-class background, 40 years-old on average, high academic performance''. I.e., does being an entrepreneur correlate positively or negatively with having children, among the mentioned group.

Whoops. Dexen got it. I mean, if you take the same set of criteria as before, less the requirement that they be a successful entrepreneur, what percentage of that larger group is married and with children? Without knowing that figure, the statement "60% of successful entrepreneurs are married and have kids" does not tell the story this (misleading, in my opinion) headline wants to tell you.

I do not mean "what percentage of the population is around 40, educated, and married with children?"

60% of pilots wear grey socks. Wearing grey socks makes it more likely you'll be a pilot.

Nothing to see here, move along.

If there was a widespread hunch that wearing grey socks is detrimental to a pilot's job, then that would indeed be newsworthy.

That's actually the most insightful thought I've read on this thread.

Most of your comments have been simply obtuse. This one is either a troll or downright idiotic.

& How should I interpret the fact that you've created this account 19 minutes ago for the sole purpose of posting this comment ? What does it say about your mental sanity ?

I don't know who bob44 is, but you should chill out. Whoever he is, he's pretty much on the ball.

> What does it say about your mental sanity ?

Really? This is really what you think HN is about? Because comments like this bring down HN, more so than anything bob44 said. If anything, you just gave what he said credence.

So either start acting mature, or leave.

Seriously, "What does it say about your mental sanity?" Really?

>I don't know who bob44 is,

I think you do.

You're engaging in some serious trolling right now.

Actually, it's probably the age correlation. yay for hidden third variable. ;)

Sounds like one I heard (in jest) about water, that it's a gateway substance for marijuana addiction.

And how many cheat on their wife ? come it doesnt mean anything.

CORRELATION never means CAUSALITY , are we on a serious site or on the daily mail ?

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/201...

SO WHAT ? these numbers are pointless. I get it, they're trying to say that entrepreneurs are not unwashed hardened singles with no chance at a meaningful family life. I think this is misguided on so many levels.

1- Marriage is not an end goal for everybody. Sorry. Actually, the proliferation of divorces, close to 50 % despite the extremely high barrier of exit from that transaction should give you an idea. That's not even taking affairs into the equation.

2- So is having children, not that there is anything wrong with having kids. but the notion that not having kids is missing out on anything is false.

The essence of entrepreneurship is disruption, it's time our social norms evolve from their 50s fantasies & catch up with the reality of modern life.

> The essence of entrepreneurship is disruption

No, it really isn't. It's about getting $Y out for every $X in where Y > X, and doing that in a sustainable and preferably an ethical manner.

Disruption is the exception, not the rule in entrepreneurship, and success is simply (Y/X) * volume processed * lifespan of project. Some would even say that success is the net cumulative effect on society but that's a lot harder to measure. You could for instance make this about jobs created or amount donated to charity or something like that but most people simply use the formula above or some variation on it.

I beg to disagree. I think you're conflating entrepreneurship with business.

an entrepreneur would only assume the rather significant risk if the likelihood of payout (as denoted by your clever equations)is high enough. in a capitalistic society such as ours with millions of established businesses that would entail either 1 of these two options.

1- Make the way things are done normally, better. (Fedex vs USPS)

2-Do a completely new different thing (Facebook.) Both options are disruptive, although at different levels.

> I think you're conflating entrepreneurship with business.

And I think you're conflating competition with disruption.

Entrepreneurship and business go hand in hand, you can't have the one without the other. Someone that risks their personal fortune to open a hamburger stand by your definition is not an entrepreneur, by my definition he or she is. And that's before we look at the possible futures where that hamburger stand ends up as a chain of stores because he innovated on quality or was exceptional in service.

Disruption is not Fedex vs USPS, it's not Facebook competing with myspace for eyeballs. Disruption is AirBNB threatening the established interests in the hospitality industry, napster making record execs very worried and EasyJet causing increased blood pressure with all their fat cat competitors.

Disruption by definition can only come when a market is established, but it is definitely not a prerequisite for entrepreneurship or running a successful business.

I duly note that you don't think that either Facebook or Fedex are disruptive. by that definition of disruption, sure. Entrepreneurship is not disruptive. I rest my case

You forgot about a very big #3: find something that's working elsewhere and adapt it for a new, local audience. Lot's of countries have their own "ebay", for example and ebay tended to buy the best ones.

There are endless possibilities out there to make a business and most of them are not disruptive at all. The disruptive ones are vastly more risky.

I get your point, but disruption goes beyond concepts. entrepreneurship by way of geographic arbitrage is still disruptive to the local business scene. Whether it's facebook or studiVZ, it's still the same effect.

But in that case your word "disruptive" is so broad as to not be very useful and we already have words that mean this.

But where's the catchy buzzwords?

The observation that many successful people have children is not a threat to your social status or happiness. I might suggest saying "Bully for you guys!" and going back to whatever you'd normally be doing.

where did the suggestion of a threat come up in my comment ? I'm saying this statistic is pointless not advocating for a lifestyle or another.

It is not clear what your criticism of the study is. Instead, you come across as ranting against findings that conflict with your personal values.

As far as I can tell from reading the summary of the study, it does not advocate that being married with children is a better or "the only right way" for founding a business. It just states observations. If you have evidence that the study is biased or made up, please tell us.

Don't get angry with the numbers, don't mistake correlation with causation. Entrepreneurs are people who like to build instead of destroy, having a kid may just be a manifestation of that instinct. There are almost no incentives for having a kid these days (esp. in US), the economic climate is barren, and believe it or not, any increase in birth rate, esp. amongst the educated ones will contribute to the country's welfare in the future.

I think you might have missed the point of the article, at least the way i see it.

IMHO, the point was not to drive home the idea that entrepreneurs that want success should get married and have a child. The main point i got out of it, is that people that want to go into entreprenurship AND also would like to start a family don't have the be afraid that either one of those rules out the other.

>Actually, the proliferation of divorces, close to 50 %

It used to be so in 1980. It is not true anymore and has steadily fallen since, for numerous reasons. But this is a deep anchored belief in America. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18600304/ns/us_news-life/t/us-di...

http://www.politifact.com/new-jersey/statements/2012/feb/20/... Your article is from 2007, It's still between 40-50 %

You should read the article you so hastily posted. It supports the claim 2007 with a number of 35%. Granted, there are many ranges being thrown out, but the general trend (stated in the article you quote) is that it's well south of 50%, and continuing to move in that direction.

you should have read further , until completion instead of skimming the first part of the article & you would have concluded otherwise.

"Estimates of divorce are around 45%. When you throw in a few percent of couples who separate but never get around to divorcing, the figure of 50% is close," Paul Amato, a professor of family sociology and demography at Pennsylvania State University, wrote in an e-mail. "The probability of divorce is unlikely to rise further. In anything, it appears to be going down slightly."

"I think there is some truth to the fact that half of marriages end in divorce," Casey Copen, an associate service fellow with the National Survey of Family Growth, said. But, she said, "it’s just so dependent on the population you’re looking at."

For example, studies show couples with higher levels of education are less likely to divorce.

Burzumato put the likelihood of marriages now ending in divorce slightly lower, between 35 percent and 45 percent, but said "it might be in the 50s, it’s hard to tell."

"What we have found is that divorce rates are coming down," he said. "Cohabitation is on the rise. So those who do select marriage tend to be more committed."

The U.S. Census Bureau reported similar findings.

"As marriage rates have decreased and cohabitation has become more common, marriage has become more selective of adults who are better off socioeconomically and have more education, and divorce rates have leveled," a May 2011 report said.

Bob44

You forgot the last paragraph. I mentioned sthg about reading further, didn't i ? man, you're on a obsessive streak :) following my comments one by one, thread by thread, down-voting all you can, eh ?

"The chance of a marriage ending in divorce varies depending on a number of factors, including education and race. But overall, experts told us and reports show the overall probability of marriages now ending in divorce falls between 40 percent and 50 percent."

SO WHAT ? these numbers are pointless.

Well - for a start they act as counter to the argument I see in lots of places in the tech world - here too on occasion - that there is some special advantage to being a young entrepreneur. That doesn't appear to be true.

And for those who do value marriage and kids - it helps them see that this isn't a barrier to running a successful new business.

It's just data for goodness sake. It's not saying that you should marry and have kids. Indeed I suspect that it's largely a correlation to the age of the successful folk.

50% of marriages end in divorce, but substantially fewer than 50% of married people end up in a divorce. It's just that the people who get divorced tend to get divorced more than once.

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