Smart People Should Build Things summary

It’s not just students who influence one another in their career choices. Major professional service firms have an interest in recruiting, and therefore also play an important role in shaping students’ choices.

For starters, professional service companies compete for the best students, and thus invest heavily in recruitment. In fact, there is a virtual arms race for talent taking place at dozens of universities each year.

When you apply for a job, you have specific ideas about the tasks, the culture, the expectations, and so on. But have you ever found that these ideas turn out to be completely divorced from the reality of your work?

The same is true for professional service companies: not everyone makes a good fit.

So far, we’ve focused on professional service companies from an individual’s perspective. But how do they affect entire economies? Is it good to have lots of highly specialized consultants? Not necessarily. In fact, the evidence indicates that a healthy economy depends on other things.

In fact, it is start-ups, not professional service companies, that accelerate national economic development. This was clearly demonstrated in one study by the Kauffman Foundation, which showed that new firms accounted for all net job growth in the United States from 1997 to 2005.

So let’s say you make the decision to help drive innovation by starting your own business. What steps can you take to ensure your success?

For starters, the decision to start a company should be buttressed by solid preparation. Think of starting a business as you would of having a child: you have a moment of profound inspiration, followed by months of thankless work, ruined sleep, and frustration.

If you try to approach entrepreneurship as a lone wolf, then you’ll find it very hard to be successful. Think of the most successful entrepreneurs, such as Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak at Apple – they usually started as a team.

When it comes to raising money and finding potential employees, it’s a good idea to look within your network of friends. For example, the author had lots of help from his friends when he was starting Venture for America (VFA), a non-profit organization aimed at helping talented students gain start-up experience.

Do you have any idea who Google’s seventh hire was back in 1999? Probably not. Back then, Google wasn’t cool. However, this person probably had an incredible experience and is now loaded. Rather than starting your own firm, another attractive option could be joining a young, promising start-up.

Joining a start-up before it is “cool” can make you rich. With young start-ups, it’s possible to snag a position with real responsibility, and your personal contributions can make the difference between taking off or languishing at the bottom.

By now we’ve seen the traps that high-potential students fall into during their early careers, and we’ve also seen the enormous benefits of getting them interested in entrepreneurship. But the question remains: how do we convince them to get excited about entrepreneurship?

First, we need to find them the right role models: builders. There are many ways to tackle this. For example, universities, media companies, and public figures should actively promote start-up entrepreneurs as role models and invite them to tell their unique and exciting stories to students.