Why A Startup Is A Good Idea, Now

There exists a nearly perfect time in our lives to start working toward making our first million dollars — and that time is now.

Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook. Jennifer Fleiss and Jennifer Hyman were cofounders of e-Commerce site, Rent The Runway. Nick Friedman is the president and cofounder of College Hunks Hauling Junk and College Hunks Moving.

These success stories of young people making it big make it clear that we are never too young to make our first million.

Unfortunately, distractions are everywhere. We stress about exams, about scraping up change to buy a weekly supply of ramen noodles and about getting our homework done while simultaneously managing a social life. Starting a company is understandably the last thing on our minds.

But it shouldn’t be. Truth be told, there are always going to be reasons as to why we “shouldn’t” launch a business or pursue a business idea, such as lack of experience or lack of time. Entrepreneurship can actually enrich the traditional college experience by giving students hands-on experience in the realm of creating and executing ideas, thereby instilling values of integrity and self-confidence.

Resources are certainly available — with the recent launch of the Idea Center at the Wolfson Campus, MDC students now have access to a hub where they can exchange ideas and business plans in hopes of becoming entrepreneurs, as well as take advantage of workshops and advisement services at little to no cost.

What’s more, doing anything that promotes the reputation of millennials as something other than lazy, social-media obsessed, twerking twenty-somethings who know nothing about hard work is a worthwhile activity. Zuckerberg, Fleiss, Hyman and Friedman knew that if they did something awesome as millennials, people would take note. If they failed, it was OK because this time of our lives is the time to fail. If you mess up at something while you’re still pursuing your college education, there’s still a degree to bounce back on.

So what entrepreneurial ideas do you have?