I don’t care if you identify primarily as an engineer, artist, janitor, fireman, exotic dancer, librarian, lawyer, CIA agent or whatever your secret dream job may be. I’m going to convince you to start your own company this semester.
Consider this dream job:
2 to 4 p.m.
You roll out of bed Monday afternoon anywhere in the world. Take a hot shower, brush your teeth, put on sweats and a T-shirt and saunter down the street to a cozy office for a latte, salad and some pizza. You had the option of telecommuting, of course.
4 p.m. to whenever your work is done
You and your friends gather around a table as if you were King Arthur’s knights, discussing everything from basketball season and TV to company strategy and John Doe’s cool new idea. You start work knowing exactly why it matters — and so does the rest of your team.
Compare to this “dream” job:
6:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
You make almost $95,000 a year. You wake up at 6:30 a.m. in New York or Silicon Valley; shower, brush your teeth, pack a peanut butter and jelly sandwich; get into uniform; wait 30 minutes in traffic to get to the campus of some big, evil technology company; stumble to your cubicle; clock in; and review the corporate Zeus’ memo.
12:30 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.
You binge watch Netflix while skimming through software feature requests; sit through long, boring meetings about having too many meetings; take a lunch break at your desk; complain with your co-worker about how you aren’t respected; and clock out at 5 p.m.
Be honest with yourself: Which situation would make you happiest?
Suppose I’m sick of school and opt to avoid academia and professional schools. Then my legal career choices become two options:
If I want to be an engineer, the best-paying job option I have is to work as a cog in a machine doing what somebody else tells me to do. Maybe if I put in enough hours, I’ll be a manager someday.
If I want to be anything else, I’m in for some tough luck. An article in The New York Times last year highlighted some chilling examples of college graduates in fields outside of science, technology, engineering and mathematics still stuck in unpaid internship cycles.
Instead of settling for mediocrity, there’s a road-less-taken option that passionate, non-conformist students of any background should do: create a startup company.
Ideas don’t have to be complicated. When I was a kid, I ran a car-wash business with my younger brother. All we needed was soap, a sponge and a water bucket. We raked in $8 a car.
In fact, as long as there’s a market need, a good startup can be whatever kind of business you want. Last summer, an app called Yo came out that just sends “Yo” to another user. Not long after release, it received more than $1 million in investment backing.
A study from Kauffman Foundation — an entrepreneurial research foundation — suggests that almost half a million new businesses sprouted up in 2013. In reality, I expect that number to be much larger.
One Gainesville incubator, the Florida Innovation Hub at UF, lists more than 20 tenants on its website. Participants in a student incubator, Gainesville Hacker House, recently launched useful products like Spin Chill — a machine made to quickly turn warm beer cold.
You can start networking anytime. If you don’t enjoy writing code, it isn’t hard to find a College of Engineering undergraduate to help with a basic app, website or database. If you don’t want to illustrate and design graphics, there’s a vibrant art community in Gainesville.
There’s a catch: Running or working at a startup is a risk. It’s a risk because even though you have a job this week, you don’t know if it’ll be there the week after.
A report by CB Insights, an analytics company, concludes: “55% of failed startups raised $1M or less, and almost 70% companies died having raised less than $5M overall.” In general, ideas are unlikely to achieve Facebook- or Grooveshark-level success.
You don’t need to drop out of college like Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg to become successful — even though Peter Thiel’s foundation would give you $100,000 to do so. You could easily start a new project with your roommate or fellow scientists in your lab.
If you don’t try, you’ll never know what could have been. If you fail and can’t try again, at least your resume will stand out!
Andrew Silver is a UF mathematics junior. His column appears on Wednesdays.
[A version of this story ran on page 7 on 1/14/2015 under the headline “Time to rethink your dream job"]
