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<p>Uh, not really. The entire Silicon Valley startup environment was basically composed of 2 people tinkering with something and then selling it on an ad-hoc basis and then watching it get big. Apple was basically founded by 2 college dropouts working out of a garage who were tinkering with early computer kits in their spare time. Cisco Systems was founded by a man and a woman who were dating while working at Stanford (after having graduated at Stanford) who tinkered with new networking equipment in order to be able to find a way to send love-letters to each other electronically while they were working. Yahoo was founded by 2 guys who got bored with their Stanford doctoral theses and who were spending more time fooling around with the nascent WWW than with their studies. Google was a direct outgrowth of the research of 2 other Stanford doctoral students, who decided that what they had was so good that they would release it on the public Internet, without (at the time ) any way to generate revenue off of it. The idea of making money through search via targeted advertising came years later. Microsoft was founded by 2 computer hobbyists and college dropouts who simply decided that it would be cool to start writing programming languages for the Altair, one of the first true PC’s. Heck, look at all of the Internet innovation that is happening now - plenty of it being done by people with little real experience beyond just tinkering. </p>
<p>Those are just some of the examples of highly visible and well-branded companies of today. Hundreds of other companies have been founded that deal with non-consumer technologies (and thus not well-known to the public), or were simply acquired by one of the big boys and thus had their name-brands disappear, but nevertheless made millionaires out of their founders. Cisco Systems, for example, has acquired well over 100 networking and electronics startups, making all of their founders extremely wealthy. Many of these companies were founded by people with minimal work experience, but instead were just tinkerers, or were graduate students, etc. Google too is now starting to exert that sort of gravitational pull on the startup environment. In fact, many new software companies today are being founded with the express purpose of being sold off to Google (or one of its competitors such as Yahoo).</p>
<p>None of these guys had much work experience, and they certainly didn’t work for a company like McKinsey. In fact, like I said, many of these people never even graduated from college at all. EE (and even more, so, CS) is a field that is highly highly accepting of quirky people with limited backgrounds but who just like fiddling with technology. I am convinced that this is why the US computer and information technology industries are at the vanguard of innovation. They don’t have the filters that eliminate people who don’t have college degrees or don’t have ‘resume-perfect’ backgrounds. All you need is a really good idea and lots of hard work.</p>
<p>Now, don’t get me wrong. The vast vast majority of these high-tech startups will fail. But the vast majority of ALL new business ventures fail. And if you’re a young person with no family responsibilites, then, really, what’s so bad about starting a company that fails?</p>
<p>Paul Graham wrote a fine essay about the virtues of trying out your own startup when you’re young. He’s talking about Internet startups, but the same principle applies in any field. </p>
<p><a href=“http://www.paulgraham.com/hiring.html[/url]”>Paul Graham;
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<p>Who says that you have to raise billions to start your own fab? Most new chip companies nowadays are fabless design companies - meaning that they outsource the manufacturing to one of the chip foundries like TSMC or UMC. All you really have to do is make your own innovative chip design, get a reference design out (probably a computer simulation of what your chip would do), and then try to interest a customer. You don’t need ‘billions’ of dollars in venture capital money. Many of the top semiconductor firms, such as Nvidia (graphics chips in the Sony PS3 and original Xbox), Broadcom (networking chips), ATI (graphics chip in the Xbox360), Rambus, and so forth are all fabless. </p>
<p><a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabless[/url]”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabless</a></p>
<p>Now, again, don’t get me wrong. The vast majority of new companies fail. So this is certainly not something appropriate for those who are risk-averse. If all you want is a steady and reliable paycheck, and to be back home watching the 6-o-clock news evening news every day, the startup life is certainly not for you. But the point is, it’s not so impossible to found your own startup and become filthy rich, even if you have minimal work experience. Look at Bill Gates. Look at Steve Jobs. Neither of these guys ever had a real job in their whole lives before starting their companies.</p>