www.lifehack.org: Imagine this scenario: You’ve just graduated from college. You are given two options: (a) work at a well-known company, or (b) start your own business. Which would you choose?
Many new college graduates would most probably play it safe and choose option (a). Increasing numbers, though, would rather take the risk and go the entrepreneurial route to start up their own businesses.
4 comments:
This article is really frustrating for a number of reasons.
A) There's more to starting a business than simply obtaining credit. If they had framed it as "How to obtain credit for you small business" or as part of a larger series, then fine, but it doesn't even BEGIN to talk about a whole host of other issues, such as filing with the state, writing a business plan, various tax issues etc. Even if your small business is a freelance consulting firm of one, you still need to file with the state as an LLC (or S Corp or whatever), create a DBA name etc...
B) I'm not sure how many of us have checked our credit scores lately, but mine's not particularly fabulous, despite my 100% paid on time credit history. My debt-to-credit ratio is jacked because of student loans, and my average account history is a whopping 4 years (thanks to one 20 year old account I inherited..). It's not as easy as "proactively managing your credit."
B.1) They don't go into any other forms of funding but the traditional business loan route (except for the breezy, "it's EASY to get funding for your small business!!"). A typical college grad with $xx,xxx (at least) in student loan debt (which is non-dischargeable in bankruptcy fyi) can't just waltz into a bank and be like "can I have a couple hundred thousand dollars as a loan?" Where's the collateral!?
I'm not saying it's impossible for people to get funding without these things, but at least go into alternative methods of funding if you're going to target a demographic that is most likely coming out of school with a net worth significantly in the red. A lot of the people this article is geared towards probably (because of age, experience whatever) have very little of an idea about the nuts-and-bolts steps to actually getting a business off the ground.
I found the title of this article really enticing, and then the content entirely unimpressive. So disappointing. I would have loved to learn more about what makes the new start up companies successful. And there is a lot of guidance they could have provided about other things besides credit management--which would have been a more appropriate title for this article, because it's almost entirely what the article was about. And yes, credit management is important, but the way they go on about it in this article, you would think it's a full time job.
I agree the title of the article makes you think that more than just credit history will be discussed. However, credit history and management is a huge factor of any company because most people have to get start up loans at some point in their company's development. They listed some great points in how to achieve credit management as Jody also mentioned, but it started to feel like a credit management rant after a few paragraphs.
To be quite frank, the day of starting up your own company after commencement is behind us. In this day and age, student loans are piling up. This causes many people to choose to work for a company. In the article, I felt a very negative tone towards the graduate who chose to work for a company. Really? That seems excessive. I was not impressed by the tone. Although achieving and maintaining good credit is difficult, I don't think this article realizes how impossible it might be, especially in a college setting. Further more, the site is called "Life Hacks." This does not seem like a credible site. Finally, I felt like this article was talking down to me. I understand that it was trying to explain things simply, but it missed its mark.
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