Entrepreneurship 20 years ago

20 years ago I was in a college entrepreneurship club with 200 members.

Only 2 people out of 200 actually had a business: 
– Me (ran a rave equipment drop shipping site).
– Dude who patented a roofing device inspired from his family’s business.

Since then entrepreneurship has boomed, and I think a few things have changed:

1.) It was VERY taboo and weird to openly speak about money.

It was common courtesy to NOT ask people about money or finances…and you rarely heard people openly discuss their personal finances.

I used to openly list my finances on my first blog NevBlog.com, and this was considered an insane move.

Nowadays people openly say on their Twitter profile “I sold a company for $10.5m.”

So it’s cool to see people more open about money, so more people can learn how to make it.

2.) Owning a business was HARD, cost a lot of money, and little information was available.

Even a website cost a lot of money in hosting/bandwidth. Just owning a computer cost thousands of dollars.

Nowadays you can run a huge website or social following from a phone, essentially for free.

3.) Owning a business wasn’t cool. It was looked upon as an odd and un-safe thing to do.

Entrepreneurship was starting to become slightly cooler, but it was investment bankers and finance people that were looked upon with admiration, not entrepreneurs.

That’s changed.

It’s neat to see in 1 generation “starting a business” go from a fringe/weird activity to a mainstream thing possible for anyone!