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1. 21 Reasons to Start a Business Today.
We could throw a long list of reasons at you as to why someone
decided to start a business. We’ve heard them all, from something as
relatable as wanting to earn some extra money on the side to more
obscure reasons like wanting to be the first company to make hats for
parrots.
All in all, different people want to own their own businesses for
different reasons.
There are no right or wrong reasons. Sure, there might be one or two
good reasons why you shouldn’t start a business right now. But
entrepreneurship has proven itself as being life-changing for so many
people that it’s worth considering.
In this post, I’ll detail 21 reasons why you should consider starting
your own business. I’ve integrated images, statistics, graphs, quotes,
lists, and links to other resources–all in the hope that this post will be
useful to you as you think about leaping into the world of business.
Reasons You Should Start Your Business Today
1. You Can Find Freedom
Freedom is the golden promise of entrepreneurship. Over and over
again, entrepreneurs that we interview for Foundr Magazine point to
autonomy, to independence, as a key driver of their decision to start a
business.
This isn’t just a little anecdote I’ve noticed. It’s a huge reason that
people become entrepreneurs.
In 2008, the academic International Entrepreneurship and
Management Journal released stats from a global survey of early-
stage business owners. Independence was the most common reason
these people gave for starting their business:

2.  Within the 25 countries, the study looked at, an average of 38% of
beginning business owners cited independence as a motivation.
 Independence served as a reason for 35% of entrepreneurs in the
US and 39% in the UK.
 In Australia and Japan, 57% of beginning owners pointed to
independence as their motivator.
Why does this fervor for freedom move people to hurl themselves into
the crazy world of business? Freedom is having more control over the
course of your life, having the power to direct it in the ways that you
want, rather than working for the whims of others.
Owning your own business means being your own boss,
deciding when you work, how you work, and what you work
on.
Of course, business owners still do need to cater to market demand.
But when you become the business owner, you choose how to do
that. It gives you greater autonomy.
2. You’ll Build a Source of Pride
Accomplishing tough things gives us a sense of achievement.
Pride isn’t just a deadly sin. In healthy doses, it bolsters your self-
worth and lets you take credit when you achieve something worthwhile
(like creating a successful company).
Starting a small business is no small venture. You’ll pay for it in sweat,
working hard to move onward. But that’s okay because entrepreneurs
don’t shrink from effort or retreat from a challenge. We aim to do big
things.
There are no participation trophies in entrepreneurship.
When you succeed, you’ll know it’s worth celebrating.
The Journal of Business Venturing conducted a survey of 405
entrepreneurs and saw that almost 65% went into business at least in

3. part because they wanted to achieve something and be recognized for
it.
While some humility is still important, that pride and recognition can
boost your self-esteem. Why care? A review of research literature
published by Psychological Science in the Public Interest found that
self-esteem works some pretty great magic. It gives you:
 More confidence in group settings
 More persistence
 Greater happiness
3. You Can Do Things Better
No existing company does everything right. Waste and inefficiency do
saddle the private sector, and beyond the balance sheet sits the
simple fact that we haven’t yet invented everything that could improve
the world. One reason to start a business, then, is to go after these
problems.
Think about your everyday life. Is everything perfect? No. At least now
and again, you encounter things that annoy, pester, and drain you.
You wish there was some way to beat these issues, but there isn’t, so
you sigh, complain, and move on, hoping that someday it gets better.
But if that’s you today, it doesn’t have to be, because each little
annoyance you stumble into could be a business opportunity. There’s
another approach:
1. When you have a problem in life, ask yourself: Does a good
solution already exist?
2. If not, do other people have this problem?
3. If they do, consider starting a business based around a new
solution to your problem.
For example, traditional Q-tips posed a safety problem to people’s
ears, so one California team created the Oto-Tip, which aims to solve
that problem (and netted them $77,000 in crowdfunding money to
bring their company to life).

4. A few young men in the 1970s saw a problem with the difficulty and
complexity of personal computing, so they tried to solve it by creating
a new operating system. Today, we call that company Microsoft.
If you can relieve a pain point for people, then you have a reason to
go into business.
4. You Can Make Money
A successful business could earn you lots of money. Arianna
Huffington, the founder of HuffingtonPost, has an estimated net worth
of $100 million. Richard Branson, the entrepreneur behind Virgin, had
a net worth of $4.3 billion. Then there’s Bill Gates, who started
Microsoft. He’s sitting at a nice $115 billion.
Money is a big reason that many people start businesses. The
International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal study I
mentioned earlier points out that, across the 29 countries examined,
an average of 23% of entrepreneurs are in it (at least in part) to
increase their wealth. While it’s a common motive, the percentage of
entrepreneurs who embrace it varies between countries. Here’s a
sampling:
 Australia: 11%
 United Kingdom: 15%
 New Zealand: 26%
 Mexico: 30%
 United States: 35%
 Chile and Greece: 42%
While the variations between countries are intriguing, the main
takeaway for our purposes is that lots of people start businesses
because they want to make money.
Of course, money isn’t everything, so wealth isn’t the only motivation
that these entrepreneurs have. It’s just one reason among many. Even
if you do care a lot about money, it’s true that most people, even most
successful entrepreneurs, will not reach the stratospheric wealth of

5. Huffington, Branson, and Gates. But respectable amounts of money
do matter, and might even make you happier.
It’s said that money doesn’t buy happiness, but that old adage doesn’t
quite jibe with modern research. Some scholars say that after a
certain amount of income, more money doesn’t make you happier. But
even they conceded that up until that point, more money does help.
Some sources suggest a cutoff point as $75,000 (earning more money
after about $75k per year doesn’t boost emotional well-being).

6. If this research is true, then a successful business could catapult you
over the cutoff line.
But this isn’t the final say on the matter. A different set of researchers
contends that there isn’t a cutoff point–that more income always
makes you happier (or, at least, that whatever the cutoff is, we don’t

7. have substantial numbers of people who’ve reached it). The Wall
Street Journal graphed the study results:
I think that these empirical findings, while interesting, underscore the
fact that this issue isn’t like a clear, crisp day. There’s a lot of fog, and
you have to figure out what works for you, how you can best balance
the drive for money with other parts of the good life.
But no matter how much you care about money, it isn’t the only
reason to think about starting a business. Let’s keep going through the
reasons.
READ MORE: How to Start a Business for $127 (or less!)
5. You’ll Learn New Skills

8. Don’t think that you need an MBA (most of the successful
entrepreneurs profiled by Foundr don’t have one). This isn’t the
corporate world–starting your own business is a different critter, and in
many cases, you can pick up the entrepreneurial skills you need as
you go.
In fact, many people start businesses because they want to learn new
skills. It’s a dynamic way to grow your know-how.
When learning new skills, the sky is the limit. And if writing is a skill
you improve, you might begin avoiding stale cliches like the one I just
used.
Just a bit ago, I mentioned the Journal of Business Venturing survey.
It also found that education is a big reason that entrepreneurs go at it:
65% of the people interviewed said that they started their business, at
least in part, to keep learning.
Why does learning fill so much of the plate here? Starting a business
takes more than your idea. You need the skills to make it a reality and
bring in customers. Entrepreneurship lets you learn those skills as you
go and apply them along the way.
Since you probably can’t be an expert in everything, you can also pay
others to do some of these things (hey, us freelancers have to stay in
business somehow). But the more you learn, the more you can do
yourself.
Okay, so starting a business can help you learn new skills. Why
should you care?
First, I’d say that learning is fun. Being able to do new things is just
plain cool. But second, it carries psychological benefits, since learning
new skills boosts your memory, even as you age.
Besides, in a world that seems ever-quickening, keeping up has it’s
perks. Joyce E. A. Russell, vice dean at the University of Maryland’s
Robert H. Smith School of Business, put it well:

9. “All around the world, people are going back to school,
taking online courses, mastering additional languages, etc.
— all in the spirit of growth and continual learning. With
today’s more complex business environment, learning is
not just a nice thing to do — it is essential for staying on
top of things.”
READ MORE: The 3 Best Low-Cost Businesses to Start with $1,000
or Less (Even $0!)
6. You Might Lower Your Taxes
This obviously won’t be your chief reason for starting a business, but it
helps. As a small business owner, you may be able to get tax breaks
that help your business–and even tax breaks that ultimately help you
as an individual.
(Just a quick disclaimer: I’m no tax expert. You should look up the
laws in your country and talk to a financial professional before making
any decisions or taking any deductions.)
Since I live in the US (and the most readily available online reading
focuses on the US), I’ll focus on what the Americans reading could get
for their taxes by starting a business. Here’s the first bit, from the
widely beloved IRS itself:
“Business expenses are the cost of carrying on a trade or
business. These expenses are usually deductible if the
business is operated to make a profit.”
What this means, according to the Houston Chronicle, is that you
might get to deduct things like magazine subscriptions, phone
services, travel mileage, and membership in professional
organizations. Heck, if you work in a home office, you might be able to
swipe some of your rent off taxes. If you need something to run your
business, then it might qualify for a deduction.

10. The IRS also helps mitigate risk for American entrepreneurs.
According to Mashable, you can write off any losses from your
business, which means that a side business could help your tax
return.
Over on his blog, Steven Chou calculated that the average American
could get something like a 10% write-off by having a business.
Tax laws vary from country to country, so you should check out how
your country handles business taxes.
READ MORE: 4 Online Business Ideas for Absolute Beginners
7. You Could Create Jobs
If you start a company, you might one day need to hire employees. On
that day, you’ll have created an opportunity for someone else.
Sure, when you first start out, your business will be small. But that’s
not bad, because it’s often small businesses that create jobs. For
example, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reports that small
firms create 64% of new jobs in the US.
And let’s not just look at the raw number of new jobs. There’s more to
it. As the owner of a company, you could treat your employees well,
create a stellar company culture, and make people feel like they’re
involved in something that’s worth it. Be the boss you wish you had
(or, perhaps, emulate a great manager you’ve worked under).
I wouldn’t be writing this article if Nathan hadn’t created Foundr. I love
this gig, and it’s an opportunity that never would’ve existed if Nathan
hadn’t started his business. These are the small things that make a
difference in people’s lives.
READ MORE: 4 Online Business Ideas to Consider During a
Pandemic
8. You Can Follow Your Passion

11. Whether to start a business is a decision you must make. There’s
another thing you get to decide: what that business does.
One reason to start a business is so that your job can be something
that thrills you. Most people would love to have work that centers on
something they care deeply about. It’s time to break out your passion.
Well, maybe.
Let’s get real: not everything you enjoy could make a business that
makes money. Let’s use a silly example. I love watching The Colbert
Report, but nobody will pay me to watch it. Even if the show wasn’t
ending, nobody would pay me to watch it.
Superstar entrepreneur Chris Guillebeau points out this reality in his
book, The $100 Startup (a short read that I readily recommend).
But you don’t have to give up on turning your passions into a
business–you just need to be pickier. Not everything will work. But
something might.
What’s the trick? Convergence. Check out the diagram on the right.
Chris explains that you need to think about your passions and what
other people are willing to spend money on.
You will find your business idea where those two overlap. That’s how
you can raise up a successful business while still engaging your
passion.
That’s exciting. But it’s more than that because it’s also useful.
Passion doesn’t just make a business fulfilling–it might make it
successful. There isn’t much research in this area, I’ll admit, but a
2012 paper in the Human Resources Management Review suggests
that the work that has been done shows that passion for the work has
a direct, significant effect on company growth.
9. You Can Live With Excitement

12. Freedom, money, skills, pride, passion–and uncertainty–all blur
together to spawn excitement. Starting a business can get you
pumped!
Entrepreneurship amounts to an ever-changing challenge. New things
pop up, big goals loom ahead, and you’ve got to hustle, hustle, hustle.
You only need to spend a bit of time in the blogosphere’s
entrepreneurial niche to see that it’s an exciting environment.
Entrepreneurship is a race to overcome obstacles and a grand journey
into uncharted territory and a jaunt to a crazy theme park whose rides
you built.
These are metaphors that describe starting a business, and we can
learn a lot from the metaphors we use. A study in the Journal of
Business Venturing found that many of the metaphors we use to talk
about starting a business “are dynamic in nature, emphasizing the
constant drive forward, the excitement of the process, and its creative
nature.”
That’s key: the excitement of the process. What the study points out is
a reality that you can see for yourself if you read blogs about
entrepreneurship, a reality that in many ways, starting a business isn’t
only about the company you’re creating.
It’s about how you get there, and the intersection between dreams of
the future and the process right now can exhilarate.
That’s the excitement of entrepreneurship.
10. You Can Leverage the Internet
Foundr is entirely online business–and it works. The Internet is fertile
soil for business growth.
Businesses can leverage the Internet to advertise, blog, poll
customers, sell products, and reach a wider audience than ever
before. Fortune sums up why the web is a mighty reason to start a
company:

13. “There’s likely been no better time to be an entrepreneur.
You can reach global markets, use technology to have
smaller and smarter back office operations, and all the
while, continue to be nimble and create innovative products
and services.”
There’s a word for all this buying and selling on the Internet–
ecommerce–a word whose importance has been magnified by the
growth of online businesses. It’s not here to sprint, pant, and die. It’s
here, marathon-like, for the long term.
The Internet also offers a host of tools that make starting a business
easier. For instance, the power of the web lets you collect data on
visitors to a company website, which you can analyze and use to
inform A/B testing.
11. You Can Escape the Rat Race
The beginning of a Huffington Post article really struck me:
Have you had enough of the nine-to-five (or should they
call it the seven-to-seven?),the pointless rounds of
meetings, and wondering if this is what life’sreally about?
That’s dismal. That’s dreary. And for too many people, that’s what
their job feels like. Sixty-five percent of American workers, for
example, are unsatisfied with their job.
The article quoted above is titled “10 Tell-Tale Signs You Are Ready
to Leave the Rat Race,” but I’m not sure we need an article about
those signs. So many people feel worn down by their careers that
we’ve invented this term–rat race–to describe how futile it sometimes
seems. Seriously, it’s in Urban Dictionary:

14. For many, the solution is to escape the rat race by starting their own
business. It’s a reason that differs from most of the previously listed
ideas in one key way: in this case, you’re starting a business not to get
to something (money, passion, freedom, etc.), but to get away from
something (the rat race).
It’s what geographers and sociologists call a “push factor.” Some
people are pushed into business by the crushing reality of the rat race.
Alongside some of the other reasons I’ve listed, it can be a powerful
motivator.
This push factor is real. A whopping 40% of Australians are unhappy
with their job. UK workers are more dissatisfied than workers in other
European countries. Job satisfaction stands–no, lays wounded–at its
lowest level in two decades.
A business of your own isn’t easy or stress-free, to be sure. But it’s
yours: the freedom, pride, and passion of entrepreneurship make it a
great alternative to the rat race. There’s another part of all this, too.
Not only do many people hate their jobs, but many live in
fear that they’ll lose their livelihoods: less than half of
American employees,for example, feel that they have job
security.
2020 has seen hundreds of millions if not billions of people suddenly
out of work or facing “job jeopardy”. Losing your job can be
catastrophic, so it’s no wonder that millions upon millions are now

15. turning to side-hustles and startups to keep their finances afloat during
these uncertain times.
READ MORE: 5 Low-Cost Startup Business Ideas You Can
Implement with Less Than $100
12. You’ll Have Meaning and Purpose
A business can be a fantastic source of meaning in your life.
Meaning, or purpose, matters. It differs from happiness, which I talked
a little bit about earlier, in that happiness is made of moment-to-
moment pleasures, while meaning stems from an overarching sense
of purpose.
Starting a business is a grand project. If you’re serious about it, then it
immediately carries purpose.
Commitment strengthens that sense of purpose, and ownership
strengthens commitment. In one neat experiment, researchers ran an
experiment that divided the test subjects into two groups of people for
a lottery. Members of one group were randomly assigned a number
for the lottery, while members of the other group got to write down a
number of their choice.
When the researchers offered to buy back the lottery tickets, the
people who had chosen their own number demanded, on average,
five times as much money for their ticket, even though their choice
didn’t give them a statistically higher shot at winning the lottery.
That shows the power of ownership. It brings commitment. People
who own their own businesses are committed to it, which strengthens
their sense of purpose.
Freedom and pride and excitementand commitment collide
to make meaning—that sense of purpose, of drive, of
overwhelming worth. I think we can agree that a
meaningful life is a desirable life. But if you don’t buy that,

16. consider the fact that a life without meaning can actually
be unhealthy.
A team of researchers looked at gene expression, which is when the
information coded in a gene is used to make a protein or some other
cellular product. In a way, gene expression turns on certain genes.
When you’re under a lot of stress and adversity, your body turns on
more inflammatory genes. What the scientists found built on that
understanding—and twisted it in new directions.
When looking at the gene expression profiles of the adults in the
study, the researchers saw that high levels of happiness, just like
adversity, turned on inflammatory genes. The problem with that is
huge because they noted that this kind of undesirable inflammation
can lead to heart disease, brain disease, and cancer.
But the findings aren’t all sky-is-falling awful. While self-indulgent
happiness alone might spell bad news, the scientists found that high
levels of meaning clamped down on inflammatory genes. Striding
through life with purpose can boost your health.
13. You Can Innovate
Innovation drives economies forward. It propels the engine of human
advancement, bringing us new technology and new solutions. Also,
it’s really, super-duper cool.
Starting an innovative business would let you be a part of that. Many
entrepreneurs have sprung into action due to a desire to innovate.
Is this whole innovation thing nothing more than one buzzword and a
pair of dice? Nope. The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor’s 2013
Global Report found that lots of entrepreneurs innovate in entirely new
ways. Here’s a graph from the report:

17. 14. You Might be Able to Bootstrap
You don’t always need lots of cash on hand to start a business. Look
at Foundr!
Some people fear starting a business because they don’t have
trainloads of cash to dump into it. While capital helps, however, you
don’t always need a huge investment to launch a successful venture.
Credit cards, loans, and venture capital aren’t the only answer.
There’s bootstrapping.
Investopedia defines bootstrapping:
“A situation in which an entrepreneur starts a company
with little capital. An individual is said to be bootstrapping
when he or she attempts to found and build a company
from personal finances or from the operating revenues of
the new company.”

18. Besides letting you avoid loans and begging, bootstrapping gives you
independence. It might be harder to start if you’re funding your own
business, but once you get going you won’t be beholden to anyone
who gave you money–because you provided all the money needed.
Bootstrapping constitutes a reason to start a business because, along
with the Internet, it lowers the barrier of entry. A lack of money doesn’t
have to stop you, and because you know about bootstrapping, you
can think consciously about how to do it.
Even entrepreneurs who don’t know about bootstrapping often use it.
A 2012 CEFAGE working paper reports that even though 83% of the
Portuguese small businesses they interviewed hadn’t heard the term
bootstrapping before, all of them used at least one bootstrapping
technique.
15. You Could Get Money for Causes You Care About
One great reason to start a business is that it could help you get the
money that you can use to do good in the world.
We live on a globe rife with problems, and often, a lack of funding
causes those problems. A successful business would put you in a
place to do something about that.
Many entrepreneurs do this. In 2013, Facebook founder Mark
Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan donated over $970 million to
charity.
That same year, Nike co-founder Phil Knight donated $500 million to
Oregon Health & Science University, a non-profit hospital.
Then there’s the Gates Foundation, created by Bill and Melinda Gates
to address problems in the US and worldwide. Each year, the
organization pours billions of dollars into fighting HIV, tuberculosis,
and malaria; creating clean sanitation in the developing world; working
to decrease maternal mortality and boost healthy childbirth worldwide;
and supporting public libraries around the globe. Since its founding,

19. the Gates Foundation has granted over $31.6 billion to charitable
causes.
Okay, you might think, that’s all awesome, but those are big players:
these are people who found wild success and are rolling in the dough.
Fair enough. But you don’t need to net billions with a business to use
the money for good.
A 2010 Ernst & Young survey of entrepreneurial award winners is a
good starting point. It found that 89% of entrepreneurs donate money
to charity. What’s more, 61% think that they’re more likely to give to
charity because they’re an entrepreneur, and 70% also donate their
time to good causes.
16. You Can Consider Social Entrepreneurship

20. So far I’ve talked about reasons that might prompt you to start a more
conventional commercial business. But that’s not the full extent of
entrepreneurship. If you embrace the idea of doing good through
business but want to focus even more exclusively on that, then social
entrepreneurship may be right for you.
Duke University professor J. Gregory Dees explained what social
entrepreneurship tries to do:
“Social entrepreneurs aim to disrupt industries and
revolutionize processes, just like any business
entrepreneur, but they also more directly look away from
market value and toward social value.”
The “social” part means that social entrepreneurs primarily aim to
improve society, rather than profit (much like a charity).
Social entrepreneurship is a term that means different things to
different people, but I like to take a broad view of it. The kinds of
businesses and organizations that social entrepreneurs form,
according to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, range from purely
social efforts to ventures that mix social and commercial motives to
simultaneously running social and commercial organizations that have
complementing goals.
Social enterprises–the kind of “businesses” that you might start–are
equally open, in my view: some are non-profits, some are not-for-
profits, and some are for-profit.
A new wave of businesses has invigorated the social sector with new
life, and if that excites you, then you might have reason enough to
consider starting this different kind of business.
If you want to launch your own social enterprise, be creative, and think
widely.
Then there are differences in who social enterprises are trying to help.
The most common beneficiaries of social enterprises are young

21. people, but there’s so much more going on. Here’s a quick graph from
the study:
(The percentages add up to more than 100 because many
organizations are aiming to benefit people who fit into more than one
group. For instance, a nonprofit aiming to help disabled youth and
their families would fit into three of the above categories.)
READ MORE: 100 of the Best Side Hustle Ideas and Jobs
17. You Could Crowdfund
Bootstrapping not going to work for your idea? No problem: another
great reason to start a business is that we live in an age of
crowdfunding.

22. Crowdfunding is a relatively recent innovation in how businesses can
raise money to get started. It occurs when a large number of people
donate to a business project, with each person giving a small amount
of money.
It happens on websites like Kickstarter, Indiegogo, and ArtistShare.
Business founders create “projects,” which include a webpage
explaining the product idea to visitors, who may choose to become
“backers” by giving money. Most crowdfunding campaigns give
rewards to backers, like a copy of the final product once it’s made.
Instead of relying on a few big investors, you can go straight to the
market and ask mass numbers of people to breathe life into your idea.
Crowdfunding helps businesses hop over that initial financial hurdle.
For many businesses, it works. Here are a couple of stats for
Kickstarter, the world’s biggest crowdfunding platform:
 More than 74,800 projects have received funding since 2009.
 Over $1.4 billion has been pledged across Kickstarter projects.
Crowdfunding is also a good reason to start a business because you
can choose a crowdfunding platform that fits your needs. While all
crowdfunding sites share the same core idea, they do differ in certain
areas so make sure to compare notes.
18. You’ll Experience New Things
Every business owner works through a different set of experiences,
and those experiences are often chances that never would’ve
manifested had the person been too scared to start their business.
I’ve thrown a lot of data at you, going on about what academics have
to say and why other people start businesses. But there’s more than
that, because starting a business is personal.
Some will grow big, and some will stay small. Some will become a
new career, and some will remain a side gig. Some will push the
boundaries of entrepreneurial innovation, and some will quietly do
conventional things in ways that make a difference.

23. To start a business is to enter a maze. You don’t know when or how
you’ll get out on the other end, but the quest can be exhilarating. And
here are the important bits:
1. You will take different turns, retreats, choices—a different path—
than anyone else, even if you’re in the same maze.
2. That path will cut through a landscape, unlike anything you’ve
ever seen before. Yeah, challenges happen. But many of these
new experiences are awesome opportunities you never would
have had otherwise.
Just look at Nathan Chan, the founder, and publisher of Foundr
Magazine. He started a little web publication that’s grown, giving him
the chance to interview big-name people who’ve accomplished a lot—
Richard Branson, Arianna Huffington, Dave Goldberg (and the list
goes on).
These are experiences that Nathan never would’ve had without
launching a business. That’s why you should think about starting a
business of your own. You don’t know what opportunities will soar
your way.
19. You Can Face the Challenge
I don’t want to make starting a business sound too easy, because it
isn’t.
Many entrepreneurs sacrifice a lot of free time and social time in the
early days of their startup. But time isn’t the only issue: in a new
business, money is tight, work piles up, and plans go wrong.
When reading the Journal of Small Business and Enterprise
Development study of established entrepreneurs in New York City, I
saw an illuminating quote from one of the business owners
interviewed:
“Do your homework! Make sure that you research every
aspect of your prospective investment. Also, be ready to put

24. in major effort. You need to make sure you have the will it
takes to get the job done correctly and effectively, and if
that means working a 12 hour day to get something done,
there is no way around it.”
In that study, 43% of entrepreneurs cited long hours as a challenge in
starting their business.
Starting a business is hard. That’s why the study asked successful
business owners what advice they could offer to people thinking about
starting a business. The top three things to do are:
 Fully research the business idea first (21%)
 Have passion or commitment (19%)
 Plan properly (19%)
The challenges of starting a business are not insurmountable, and
they can in fact be satisfying to beat. That’s why Foundr was created:
to help entrepreneurs at every step of the way.
READ MORE: 28 Successful Founders Share Their Advice on How
To Start a Startup
20. You Won’t Know If You Don’t Try
Scared of failing? Everyone is.
You might think that you’ll never be able to execute your plans. You
might think that nobody will ever buy from you. You might think that if
you try to start a business, it will shatter into a million pieces, getting
you nowhere. But if we don’t at least try to start something, we’ll never
know if those fears are real or not.
The only way to know is to do. Aside from that, it’s all just guessing.
Starting a business means plunging into uncertainty. Dozens, perhaps
hundreds, of variables decide whether a new venture will fall flat or
climb to the top.

25. You can’t control all of those variables, but if you do your
best where you do have control, everything else is more
likelyto work out. The only way to guarantee failure is to
do nothing.
If you have an idea for a business, you should get started. There’s no
better day to launch than yesterday.
21. You Can Make Your Own Reasons—and Your Own Decisions
Drawing from surveys, academic research, and past Foundr interviews, I’ve assembled
a list of reasons why you should start a business. Perhaps you have reasons why you
shouldn’t, and that’s fine.
Maybe, as you read this post, you drafted your own list, a little screed offering 21
reasons against starting a business. Maybe not. Either way is fine because whether or
not you start a business is your own decision. You have to weigh the pros and the cons
and move from there, all while remembering that you won’t know what will happen if you
don’t dive in.
Ready To Start Your Business?
The beauty of entrepreneurship is that it lets you seize on the freedom to make your
own decisions and control your own destiny in a way that conventional jobs do not. And
in making your own decisions, you can make your own reasons.
What are your reasons for starting a business? Did any of the ideas I listed click with
you? Do you have additions of your own? Please let me know in the comments below!
ECOM M ER CE
About Andrew Urevig
Andrew is a freelance writer for hire, and works as a regular contributor for Foundr Magazine.