Stories
We spoke to David for the Courier Weekly podcast. Listen above or read the story below.
‘Statistically speaking, over the aggregate, you are better off taking a job at a big firm and working your way up like it's 1952 or you're working at some giant Korean conglomerate today, general Motors or Samsung or whatever. Right? But that underlies two truths that kind of undercut that. One is today, the odds of anyone getting a job in any big company are pretty low because with 10, 15, 25% unemployment going on in the world, there is, you know, in the United States alone, I don't know, 30 something million people who've lost their jobs. You know that even if the economy recovers in the next half of the year or two years, not all those jobs are coming back. The majority aren't. So sheerly out of necessity someone who is at any point in their career and needs to make a living is going to probably have to consider self employment and entrepreneurship as a viable option.
And it's not going to be easy to start a business. The market is terrible, the economy is down and credit is going to be pretty hard to come by, let alone venture capital, I mean, just getting like a $10000 bank loan. But here's the thing about entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs, it's a perfectly illogical behaviour. Yes. It doesn't make sense on the aggregate to do it, but people still go ahead and do it because they have a desire, they have an idea, they have an itch they have to scratch. They have something that compels them to take that risk, regardless of the cost of it. And because they know and have this belief in themselves, a faith that they can make it work.
That's always what's driven entrepreneurs in good times and bad and the reality is there is opportunity in every single economy. There's opportunity in every single time. I know of people who are starting businesses now, they're doing it with the full optimism that entrepreneurs have always had. They realise what the market is. They know it. But they're like: 'well, there's something here. And yes, I have this job, but I think if I don't do something I'm going to go crazy. If I don't do this, there's a huge opportunity lost. I have to do this and so I'm going to find a way to do it that works within this.' I think that's what's always propelled entrepreneurs and that's what's propelling them now.’
