There are quite a few things that certainly warm my heart and get me pumped as a gen y entrepreneur. What gets a young entrepreneur going? What’s the young entrepreneur’s kryptonite? What fires up young entrepreneurs? I decided to get on Twitter, Facebook and some other social networks and find out if other people’s reasoning was similar to mine and most of the replies I got were pretty much the same.
Five Things that Fire Up Young Entrepreneurs
Tech savvy people and environment
The millennial entrepreneur, actually, the typical gen y-er is well vast in most things tech related. These days most young people are walking around with cool gadgets and working daily tasks with tools that the older population are probably not so familiar with. The typical gen y entrepreneur believes he/she will relate easily with a tech savvy person and they will have things in common, so they are easily drawn to each other. Technology drives business in the world we currently live in, so when we discover people who appreciate it as much as we do, we immediately feel this polar attraction.
Socially mindful people and environment
So New media and social networking is the big thing on the internet now and gen y-ers are in the middle of it all. This generation grew up in the middle of the buzz so it’s sort of customary for us to carry on with our lives on these channels. If you utilize these social media and just carry on with these tools, we definitely have a soft spot for you.
Those who carry around Tim Ferris’ “The 4-hour workweek”
It’s just the way it is. I get a lot of stick from people when I say the typical gen y entrepreneur would rather have his day very short and chill for the rest of it than wake up at 7am and be at work till 6p.m. I am not saying millennial entrepreneurs are lazy, but we kind of think people like Markus Frind rock! I mean the lad works 1hr/ day and his company’s average annual revenue is $10million. These are the sort of people we draw inspiration from, so if you are down with these methods, then we are down with you.
Cheap stuff
I know everyone likes being prudent with funds, but millennials are especially careful. Young entrepreneurs are very financially intelligent and have grown up reading books and blogs detailing how to retire rich and how to stay away from spending money on things they can get for free. The typical millennial entrepreneur is not always keen to sign up for Adwords, he/she will much rather look for channels where they won’t have to spend a dime. Here are some things you will see: (a)We will create a Facebook fan page and invite all our friends to join, then ask these friends to invite their other friends and so forth. We will then send message after message until we reach out to enough people. (b) We will get on Twitter and make so much noise that we are hard to ignore…the point of the whole thing. (c.) We will walk up to people on the streets and try to charm these innocent people into patronizing us and our service.
Believe it or not, we will rather go through all these stressful situations than shell out hard earned bills. It’s just the way we are wired; cheap stuff puts a smile on our faces.
Independence
In case you didn’t know, gen y entrepreneurs don’t like being told what to do without having us understand why we are doing it. There’s a difference between being stubborn and being genuinely inquisitive. Most gen y entrepreneurs are the latter. I personally like to take advice from people especially those who are more experienced in my field, after all they have been through what I am currently going through, so I would expect them to know more. However, millennial entrepreneurs don’t derive joy from just the monetary reward of doing something, we get our thrill from learning something new and understanding why we are having to do what we do. While we do take advice and other people’s opinions, we are usually self-directed and we like to call the shots.
The smart and the Innovative
Gen Y entrepreneurs are suckers for new information! If you are one of those with something novel to share, you will get us going. I like listening to people, I believe everyone has something good to share and I find myself constantly getting drawn to those people who think out of the box and whose concepts are somewhat controversial. I am sure this is not something only I suffer from. We like to learn, so if you have something innovative to say, you are a winner in our eyes.
Tolu Babalola is a Social Media Consultant, budding entrepreneur and Founder of Generation-Y Startup.
Related Post: Eight More NYC Young Entrepreneurs to Keep an Eye on
