Cool, Determined & Under 30
They are running businesses in fields as diverse as Wi-Fi and fashion, blogging and music. Combined, they manage nearly 600 employees and have raised more than $100 million from investors. They have graduated from (and, on occasion, dropped out of) some of the very best schools in the country. They are collaborative, creative, and -- above all -- confident. And here's one more fact: All of them were born after October 31, 1978.
Published October 2008
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COMMENT ON THIS ARTICLEMillennials -- a.k.a. Generation Y, a.k.a. echo boomers -- are widely characterized as spoiled, impatient, and narcissistic. Their childhood bedrooms overflow with trophies earned just for showing up. Raised on a diet of adoration and encouragement, they enter adulthood rosy with entitlement. As they swarm into the workplace, their hair perpetually mussed from the wind stirred up by helicopter parents hovering nearby, companies worry how to accommodate their outsize expectations. Merrill Lynch (NYSE:MER) sponsors a Parents Day for summer analysts, so Mom and Dad can ensure their offspring are well cared for by their new work families.
As a CEO, you may wonder how to absorb such difficult young people into your company. But here's a better question: How do you compete with them? Because they are starting some fascinating companies.
Dismissing the latest crop of twentysomethings as navel-gazing screen-a-holics is a mistake. This generation, at nearly 80 million strong, is poised to be the largest, the most educated, and the most diverse in American history. That gives its members special insight into the largest, the most educated, and the most diverse market in history. They are also fearless about technology. The kids of the '80s grew up with computers; the kids of the '90s can't recall (and shrink from imagining) life before the Internet. And they are idealistic and optimistic -- traits that influence their perceptions of business. Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg are their heroes. And when they think of corporate America, they think of Office Space and maybe Enron. Were these guys born to be entrepreneurs or what?
As for being spoiled and narcissistic: I have yet to meet an entrepreneur of any age who isn't supremely confident, easily distracted by new ideas, and proud of being unemployable by ordinary companies that insist on coloring inside the lines. Entrepreneurs believe they can do anything. That belief is no less powerful for having been hammered in by their parents.
But, yes, Millennial entrepreneurs are a breed apart from those who came before. The ways in which they start companies -- and the companies they start -- reflect those distinctions.
The most significant differences arise from growing up wired. Say what you will about Facebook and MySpace; those who frequent them accept communal action -- including communal idea generation -- as the norm. Millennials are, in general, far more open and collaborative than their older counterparts. The iconic image of the lone-wolf entrepreneur holds little romance for them. Instead, they start businesses with partners -- in some cases with entire teams. Etsy, a Brooklyn, New York, website, is a virtual crafts fair at which artisans market handmade walnut coffee tables and lamps made out of vintage glass coffeepots. Co-founder Rob Kalin, an aspiring classics professor, came up with the idea in 2005 and partnered with two techies whom he met in college to launch it.
Millennials also like to build elements of community into their businesses. Matt Mullenweg's wildly successful software company, Automattic, which handles blogs for CNN and The New York Times, began as an open-source project to create better blogging software. Then a teen with no experience in software development, Mullenweg recruited volunteer coders who built, tested, and refined what has become WordPress -- one of the most popular blogging platforms -- all for no pay. Anyone can contribute to the code (so far, hundreds of people have done so), and anyone can download the software for free. "We're democratizing publishing," says Mullenweg.
And, yes, Millennial entrepreneurs are often impatient. (Inc. was even scooped by Bobby Kim of The Hundreds, who blogged about this article and who would be mentioned in it about six weeks before it hit newsstands.) But why shouldn't they move fast? Many start either Web-based or service companies whose barriers to entry can be quite low. And their customers -- particularly those customers who share the founders' demographic -- don't blink at beta. In fact, many Gen-Y entrepreneurs, infused with the aforementioned communal spirit, rely on feedback from early users to improve their offerings. Rather than sweat over business plans, they throw out something rough, then tweak and experiment. Xobni, co-founded by Adam Smith and Matt Brezina, hopes to transform Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) Outlook inboxes into social networking tools. Early on, the founders routed users through a welcome page that humbly noted the product wasn't perfect and asked for feedback. It's company building as class science project.
Millennials are the most globally minded generation since the one that invented Earth Day. Making the world a better place is sometimes an element in their mission statements, sometimes their founding principle. Meraki, for example, which is backed by Google, builds mesh Wi-Fi networks that provide free or low-cost Internet service to poor communities. MIT student Sanjit Biswas tested the model in a low-income housing development in San Francisco; Meraki is now expanding into India, Africa, and Latin America.
