From the course: Career Advice from Some of the Biggest Names in Business

Hiroshi Mikitani on entrepreneurship

- Would love to end with some career advice. When Japanese students come up to you and say, "I want to be just like you, (Hiroshi laughing) "I want to start companies, I want to be an entrepreneur," What kind of advice do you give them? - Well, there are so many different ways of becoming an entrepreneur. I used to work for Japanese Bank, went to, you know, Business school in the United States, get enough training and I started my own company at age 30. That people like you know, Mark Zuckerberg or even Bill Gates, who started the business when they're in college, and yet became extremely successful. So it depends on the ability and, you know, skills of the person. But for all the people you know, you have to be well prepared to start your business. Unless you are super talented, you know, engineer something. - [Daniel] Right. - Yeah, you want it to get, you know, the background and an understanding of, you know, basic finance, accounting, cash management, you know, HR management, and then you know, something. Unless you have a, you know, - Your superstar - Yeah superstar or you have, you know, super disruptive technology or idea. - And then do you recommend that people become entrepreneurs, when you're talking to students, you're talking to young people who have been in the job for a couple years, do you push them to go and find their own thing, or are you okay with the idea of people working their way up through large companies? - Sure, so becoming entrepreneurial, or becoming an entrepreneur, a little bit different. And definition of entrepreneur depends on is that where are you talking about a startup, or are you trying to give the influence to the society through the business? It has nothing to do with the size of the business, but I think the entrepreneur, my definition of entrepreneur, is become the leader of the business and to give the huge impact to society. So in that sense, yes. Do you, everybody should start their own business? Definitely no. It's not so easy. - Right. So and it's risky for some people. But you know, you know, if you're ambitious enough, why not? - [Daniel] Yeah. - Right, right. - So be entrepreneurial, and if you're ambitious enough, be an entrepreneur? - Yeah.

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