Economy
Today's Troublemakers Are Tomorrow's Entrepreneurs
New research shows that those with “smart and illicit” aptitudes and behaviors as kids turned out to become creative business owners later in life.
One time in the course of my research on high-tech entrepreneurship, I asked a very successful venture capitalist what it took to be successful at high-tech startups. He stared right back at me and blurted out: “About the same thing it takes to be a successful drug dealer.”
Having grown up in a rough-and-tumble town in working-class New Jersey with far more petty drug dealers than successful venture capitalists or high-tech entrepreneurs, my intuition told me he was onto something. Now I have some proof.