In an excerpt from his new book, Smart People Should Build Things (HarperCollins 2014), our friend and former Manhattan Prep CEO Andrew Yang imparts some rather counterintuitive advice for those looking to launch a start-up: “Entrepreneurship isn’t about creativity.” Yang—who founded Venture for America—instead compares building a company to having a child, explaining that conception is often “followed by months of thankless hard work and waking up in the middle of the night.” While emphasis is typically placed on coming up with an inspired idea, he sees the “follow through” as a far more crucial stage.
Yang enumerates several preliminary strategies for getting ready to launch your venture—many of which, we might add, draw on the sorts of skills and opportunities afforded by business school: expanding your network, seeking out potential investors, building financial projections and drafting business plans, for example.