11 Reasons Why Generation Y Will Build Successful Startups

You have probably heard about that 12 year old kid who built a new website for fun at his parent’s house and sold it for millions to Google or Facebook. He taught himself how to code and created a real business. Is this a new pattern of young entrepreneurs building successful businesses and products? Many notable entrepreneurs such as Elon Musk started at a very young age. When he was only 12,  Musk sold a BASIC computer language listing for a video game called Blastar to the PC and Office Technology Magazine for approximately $500 USD. Starting at a young age is not a new trend, however the world has created a reality in which the infrastructure for the next generation is to start earlier, fail earlier and learn more. Are startups built by Generation Y going to become even better startup companies than the ones us “adults” are sweating our pants off to build?

I recently had the opportunity to work with young entrepreneurs and mentor them about startups, design and business during a hackathon event. This experience, taking place about a few months ago, taught me the importance of educating these young entrepreneurs and creating an environment which allows them to make mistakes and build new products as early on as possible (the youngest entrepreneur at the event was 12 years old!). I was asked by the Hacking Generation Y organizers to volunteer and participate as a mentor at a hackathon for young makers and entrepreneurs. This global event takes place in several locations including Silicon Valley, Israel, Jamaica and now is coming to London. It took place over an entire weekend, something that could have been a barrier to me and the other great mentors who were invited to attend the event. However, all mentors, judges and the organizers who took part,  seemed to do so with great dedication and a sense of passion to what they were doing.  The hall was packed with hundreds of young developers, designers, thinkers and makers ranging from age 12-26. They worked for 36-hours straight, building their products and ideas. The time I spent there, talking and listening to these smart and inspiring kids made me realize why the next generation of startups is going to be incredible and surprise us with things we have yet to see, as well as why it is so crucial for us, the older generation to invest in them: 

1. They enjoy working in teams - Anyone watching these young and talented groups of entrepreneurs, would agree that they seemed to enjoy working with one another. They were talking, consulting, laughing and openly discussing things together. They didn’t seem to care about being the one who developed the main and most important feature, nor were they concerned about getting credit for it. They were not afraid to ask their friends for help, or get up from their chair and support other team members. When I joined one of the groups to discuss their idea and plan, they all participated in the conversation, each talking about his/her own responsibility yet knowing what the other members were working on. Being an entrepreneur myself, working and building startups, I’ve learned that a key to the success of a startup, is to have a strong and unified team around a common vision. Having your team getting along and supporting each other with respect to building a great product that people want, may be the number one key to your startup’s success.  

2. They constantly want to learn new things - After a whole night with no sleep, I noticed one exhausted group sitting outside taking a break, chatting with each other and with a couple of other mentors - I joined the conversation. They were discussing which hackthon they should attend next. One of the group members said, “perhaps we should attend one in which we’d have better chances at winning, and which uses platforms that we’re familiar with and have worked with in the past”. This turned into a heated debate. The others didn’t agree, “What would you learn from that? the whole idea of these hackathons is learning to code and building stuff with new and challenging platforms and languages.” It was obvious that many of these young entrepreneurs were not necessarily there for the prize or to come first place on the winners podium. Of course, who wouldn’t want to win first place? but the main reason they attended these hackathons was to learn new stuff and challenge themselves. Building a startup is all about learning - about your users, market, your team and yourself. This desire and motivation to learn is one of the most important traits required to building a startup.

3. They have the support and infrastructure to build and create  -  These types of events were probably out there when I was a teenager (back in the 90s), but there is no doubt that they are more common and way better today. The Hacking Generation Y was organized by young hackathon entrepreneurs and led by Michael Matias, and his friends. The event was well organized and thought out to the very tiny details. T-shirts, mentors, judges, equipment, pizza and lots of surprises for all participants. The organizers were running around taking care of everything. And the amazing thing was that they are only 17-22 years old. They are the ones who initiated this entire event. Michael was dressed up in a lion outfit handing out personal treats to all attendees and always with a smile. Once you noticed which companies supported and sponsored the event including Google, Foursquare, Pebble, Uber, WeWork and many others (the full list is here), it was clear how supportive the community was of this event, unlike local events that took place when I was 17. It was great to see the support of people like Prof. Yosi Matias, Vice President at Google, participating as a mentor and a judge. The financial support of such event sponsors along with the time and effort of the mentors and organizers, help educate young entrepreneurs and get real lessons to help them create their own products.

4. They help each other - Not once, while mentoring one of the groups I would notice members from other groups walking around, asking for help with Google Maps API or with Android.  I was glad to witness other group members getting up and giving a hand with no hesitation.  Although this is a competition, Gen Y understands that the true winners are the ones who help their peers, fellow startups, and community. I sometimes come across startups that are not willing to help other startup companies. They fail to understand that helping others could also help them create important relationships in the community and perhaps also help promote their own startup.

5. They are not there for the money - During the entire time I spent at the hackathon, I did not hear a single person of the talented young entrepreneurs say anything along the lines of “When we get acquired by Facebook” or “my goal is to sell my company and become a millionaire”. The type of things you would hear them talk about was which problem they were solving and how they planned on doing so. Unlike many entrepreneurs that I know whose primary incentive is financial, those kids are there to help others, build beautiful and useful products and just bring their own ideas to life. I recently read a very interesting article by Michael Eisenberg from Aleph Ventures titled “The Pursuit of Unicorns Is Ripping The Soul Out Of Entrepreneurship”. The article describes how entrepreneurs today are solely interested in building the next Unicorn instead of doing what they really should which is to “try to fix a really nagging problem in this world”.  Generation Y, because of its innocence and innate motivation is not here to build Unicorns, they are here to solve problems, and enjoy the making. They do it because they wish to solve their own, their friends and family’s problems. It’s our job to direct them toward growing their business further so that it becomes valuable to the larger crowd. The entrepreneurship soul is definitely the soul of the Millennials and I am positive that they will build great unicorns with a big entrepreneurship soul.

6. Their ability to pivot - One of the most important things for a startup is the mental ability to decide when and why to pivot (If you’d like to read more about what pivot is, I recommend reading The Lean Startup by Eric Ries). The meaning of pivot is that you are no longer continuing with your product in its current form but rather sticking to your vision. When a startup pivots it uses the assets, team, knowledge, support and even its product and technology in order to change the idea and develop other products that people really want. You may be wondering “but why should a startup pivot, anyway?” Startups pivot because even if they create the most sophisticated and well-designed product out there, it doesn’t necessarily mean that people are using it. If people don’t want to use your product, it may be time to pivot.  This requires a lot of maturity but also flexibility. Something that is really tough when you are an older entrepreneur to let go of your original idea. As we grow, our ego grows with us, and so it becomes extremely difficult for us to come to a conclusion that the thing we put our hearts into is not necessarily something that people want, and that we can do better and pivot. Mentoring the Hacking Generation Y participants, I remembered that when I was a kid, if I fell off my bicycle, I would cry for a minute and then hop back on. Not too long ago, I happened to fall off a bicycle again, only this time I was older. Even though I didn’t cry, it took me 10 minutes to be  able to hop back on that bike again. A startup is just like riding a bicycle, you will fall, many times along the way, but you will learn. And the sooner you get up, the better.

7. Don’t need any sleep - When you start your own venture, there’s no difference between night and day. Your team will stay up late to solve a problem, to fix a bug, or to launch a product. I once heard Glide’s Co-founder saying: “Sleep? What is sleep?” and he was right. To make it work, you will have to give up a lot of hours of sleep, but you will enjoy it. Let’s face it. Gen Y is young, and doesn’t need much sleep in order to function - and this is incredible! I used to study and work at night, and stay up late, and not care much. Today, I need my 7-8 hours of sleep to be sharp at work. I really feel that my body and mind need this time to refuel and be more productive. At the Hackathon, generation Y proved that they need zero hours of sleep to create beautiful products.

8. Great online tools to learn how to code, design and build - When I was a teenager, I majored in Computer Sciences in High School. The most advanced programming language we learned was Pascal. The black screen with Green letters were nice and nerdy, but I got bored from doing multiplication and division tricks, and get those green numbers on the screen. The only other option to learn how to code at the time was to buy those fat books with zillion of pages and get lost after reaching page 5. I eventually dropped computer science and decided to major in Physics instead. Today, if your kid wishes to learn how to code, he or she has access to an endless variety of video tutorials, online classes, teaching how to build cool and useful products like Twitter clones and more. You even have access to special coding languages that teach kids the fundamentals of coding. Your kids can purchase a Udemy course and become experts in Ruby on Rails or buy the full guide for Swift. They can learn Python, JavaScript, HTML & CSS, SQL and PHP with online learning tools such as CodeCademy and Code School and even listen to classes on their mobile devices on the way home from school. The barrier to learning new stuff and expanding their knowledge is almost minimized to zero. Anyone who wishes to learn something new, can find some online course or asset to teach you to build new things.

9. They don’t think they know everything and they listen - One of the most important traits of a great entrepreneur is the ability to listen and get feedback, whether good or bad. Many of them feel like they know it all, and that nobody can teach them anything new. If you asked me, one of the first things that I tell young entrepreneurs is to find yourself a great mentor, and  learn from him/her. Eventually, we all learn from our own mistakes, and we will most likely experience failures along the way - failure is necessary for the growth of every startup and entrepreneur. But if you asked experienced startup founders, they would tell you that they wished they had listened more and asked for feedback early on to minimize the number of failures along the way as well as the pain every time they stumbled. What I loved about the participants at the Hacking Generation Y hackathon, was that they listened. They were thirsty for knowledge and feedback. They didn’t answer questions without first listening and putting thought into their answers. They respected what me and the other mentors had to say, and I am honored to continue mentoring several groups even after the hackathon has ended.

10. They were born with a mobile device in their hand - We all know that the future is all about mobile and wearables. According to a new research done by the Pew Research Center, 92% of teens report going online daily, while 24% say they are online ‘almost constantly’. A third of the teens participating in the research, said they have access to mobile smartphones.  These kids or as we call them “Generation Y”, think mobile, talk mobile - they live mobile. I got my first mobile phone, which was not smart at all,  when I was 18. Today, you see kids at preschool chatting with their friends and family on Whatsapp or Snapchat. They take pictures on their shiny iPhones, and see messages sent by their parents on their smart watches. Generation Y understands the importance and rules of the mobile world more than anyone else. They have the ability, tools and knowledge to capture moments in their lives and share with the world. They create online conversations with their peers, and more importantly, they create valuable content for the web and distribute it to their social networks.  Startups created by Generation Y don’t have to choose to go mobile-first, for them it’s obvious - Mobile is First.

11. They are the best social promoters - 71% of teens use more than one social network. The time they spend on social networks, and the fact that their social life, whether we like it or not, is virtual. They share pictures and moments on Facebook and Instagram and run social groups and communities. Their ability to start a conversation around a piece of content, a photo or event on a social platform is greater, also because their audience is much more active on these networks. Many companies hire the services of young people who have become social stars, and gained hundreds of thousands of followers, not by publishing tools which automate their social activity, but rather due to the content they post, and the way they go about doing that - they understand social better, and they understand their audience. With these abilities and new reality, they would be able to better promote their products and ideas and reach larger social circles, by understanding who they are promoting for, and choosing the right social channels.

Generation Y is going to build great startups and products. They are going to make delicious products that may change the way we live, the way we work and even the way we feel. However, they might not be able to do it on their own. It is our honour and responsibility, to mentor them and teach them lessons from our experience, talk and show them where we failed, and prepare them so they don’t. Every chance you have to become a mentor, teach and help young entrepreneurs with their ideas, do it! Think about how awesome it would have been if you had someone to guide you, motivate you and share valuable insights when you were young. Generations build each other, and each generation should help make the next one better.