You don’t have to start a company at age 20 to become a successful entrepreneur, according to Jeff Bezos. In fact, the billionaire Amazon founder recommends working at a successful, established company for several years before striking out on your own.
Rather than delaying your success, acquiring that valuable hands-on experience “increases your odds” of launching a successful business of your own when you’re ready to do so, Bezos said Friday at Italian Tech Week in Turin, Italy.
“I always advise young people: Go work at a best-practices company somewhere where you can learn a lot of basic fundamental things [like] how to hire really well, how to interview, etc.,” said Bezos. “There’s a lot of stuff you would learn in a great company that will help you, and then there’s still lots of time to start a company after you have absorbed it.”
Numerous entrepreneurs have founded multibillion-dollar startups after dropping out of college, and never acquiring substantial work experience before doing so. However, Bezos calls those success stories “the exception” — an understandable stance, considering that the majority of venture-backed startups fail and those that do succeed are typically led by older, experienced founders, research shows.
