Smart People Should Build Things., How to Restore Our culture of Achievement, Build a Path for Entrepreneurs, and Create New Jobs in America, by Andrew Yang, Harper Business 2014If only a small number of us become Carnegies, or Edisons, or Jobs or Zuckerbergs, then why does author/entrepreneur Andrew Yang hammer the point that we can actually funnel more of our best and brightest into building things? Aren’t the people who build things not necessarily our best academic performers – Charles Schwab, for instance, is a raging dyslexic – and aren’t many of them outrageous drop-outs, like Steve Jobs? What makes Yang think that he can control the creation of more business creators? Is this really doable, or are we listening to a capitalist innovation cheerleader? Well, Yang uses statistics – beyond his own – to illustrate how certain factors, certain environments – tend not to foster the idea of building things. His stats on where top college grads go, for instance, should not surprise us – consulting, finance, law, medicine, etc. But as he discovered during his own NYC law firm tenure, a law career can make people unhappy, or bored, or bound by debt. His solution was to leave after five months and begin the incredibly hard part of founding a software company, Stargiving…. which also failed. Two start-ups later, with a lot of hard learning (see pages 63 and 64 for Yang’s list of essential start-up steps), Yang hit big with a buyout of his education program by Kaplan. Bingo.
The stories from the Dot.com era onward will shock you – many of Yang’s experiences were hard learning rebooted again and again. But the list of similar players on page 222 will inspire you – super bright young achievers from Detroit, New Orleans, Providence, Las Vegas, and Cincinnati who left the traditional money path and struck out to build something, from Detroit Venture Partners, to Google. BUT, before you quit your job, read Yang's Ten Things pages 63/64, please!
The Mill Girl verdict: Yang’s stats support the idea that top schools continue to funnel top grads into over-crowded professions when what we need is more Builders – reassuring to read the list of entrepreneurs and would-be entrepreneurs – we still have them.