If you want to start a startup, go work for someone else

there is no contradiction. what you want to do and what this article suggests you do instead are not mutually exclusive.

consider the (perhaps poorly guided) advice "if you want to go to Florida [i think you should] go to Hawaii [instead]".

> It's unclear whether the average person learns anything from a startup.

> Entrepreneurs don't seem to learn much from their failures

There is a difference between not learning anything at all and not learning something from failures that will help in a future startup venture. I have learned a tremendous amount working at startups. I am closer to everything, nothing is in a silo and I have gotten exposure to all parts of the architecture whereas at an employer I would have been barred from infrastructure and operation tasks. There is also much more freedom to use whatever technology you want to try out, and thus you learn a lot about new programming languages and new libraries and new ways of doing things without having to get approval from layers of management and architects. You learn about your self too, your limits, you have to become independent, and self-reliant.

> Our most important finding is that the reward to the entrepreneurs who provide the ideas and long hours of hard work in these startups is zero.

Maybe if you only consider money. If you are into startups for the money alone, I feel like I would agree, stay away. If you're in a start up for the small team size, for controlling your own destiny, for being close to the customer, close to the product, and don't want to see your life's days waste away in meetings and products that never see the light of day then the value is actually immeasurable.

The self-employment study says that when people who are self-employed switch to dependent employment their wages are at least as high as their dependent employment counterparts.

From an earnings perspective, that makes start ups more appealing. You can take a shot at starting your own company. If it fails, you can still make at least as much money as if you had not started your own company.

The other thing is this blog post is looking at the average outcome. If you are starting a company, you are already starting from the assumption that you are not average.

There is nothing to suggest that the second cohort only includes failures, and bear in mind that many people -- having failed -- won't try a second time -- and if they've learned anything, it will be the people who figure out they're never going to succeed who drop out. Without knowing the probability that someone who succeeds vs. fails will try again there's simply no way to tell.

Anecdotally, it's very common for entrepreneurs to start a business, wait until it's up and running, sell it, and start over. This applies both in high-tech and more prosaic areas like restaurants and gas stations. I imagine that first-time successes are very likely to try again.

Yep - if you spend 8 years working for someone else, that's 2-4 chances at a startup you've lost.