You are not a lottery ticket – you are an underpriced option

It’s a very bad idea to try to convince people to start startups. They’re treacherously seductive enough in their own right and anyone who needs convincing is probably not going to have a great experience. This seems particularly true if you grew up in any sort of physical or cultural proximity to Silicon Valley: if that’s the case, you certainly know that startups are an option, perhaps even an attractive one; by the time you reach the point of deciding what you want to do with your life, it’s quite unlikely that you’ve not at least implicitly considered whether you might want to start one.

Europe and the UK are not like that. One of the most important ways in which they are not like Silicon Valley is that for smart, ambitious young people, starting or even working in a tech company is not close to being the most desired option, let alone the default. In fact, it’s quite possible that you could be an exceptional engineer or computer scientist here, reaching the end of your degree or your first job, and never have considered that you could start a company.

I wrote this – and we started EF – for those people. I’m assuming that if you’re reading this, you have a lot of options. Perhaps you’re considering (or already are) working in a bank or hedge fund, in a big technology company or in professional services. These are very much the European “default” options for ambitious people – and for most people they may be good options. My goal is not to try to convince you to start a startup, but to walk through what kind of person starting a startup might be a good idea for. To keep it as simple as possible, it boils down to two questions:

Do you have a good reason to want to do it?

Is it worth trying (for you)?

There are lots of bad reasons to start a startup, particularly any that remotely conceive of startups as a get-rich-quick scheme. Startups are hugely difficult, stressful, and time-consuming. They are harder than you expect, even when you take that into account. Worse, the median financial outcome is zero, even though lots of the people who start companies are smart and hardworking.

The only good reason to start a company is because there’s something you want to exist – and you believe you can build it. The startup is just the vehicle for that creation.

You don’t need a perfect idea. You need an obsession.

Ask yourself: If I had six months of time and space to build anything I wanted, what would it be?

If nothing comes to mind, you probably shouldn’t start. But if something instantly excites you – even if it’s more an area you’d want to explore than a product you’d want to build – you might be the right sort of person at the right sort of time. Many of EF’s most successful startups began exactly this way.

Good ideas don’t appear fully formed. They emerge from building, experimenting, and talking to users. Waiting until you have a “perfect idea” means waiting forever.

If everyone’s chances were equal, starting a company would be a terrible bet. Most startups fail.

But, as Peter Thiel memorably phrased, you are not a lottery ticket.

Everyone’s chance of succeeding is emphatically not equal and, for exceptional people, the expected value is probably very high indeed – not just financially but professionally, intellectually, and in terms of impact.

The interesting thing is that there appear to be no really reliable predictors of who will make an exceptional founder. At EF, we’ve seen that intelligence, credentials, and experience only take you so far. They’re the foundation – necessary but not sufficient. Working out how good a founder you are is a discovery process, not an analytical one. Your abilities as a founder are to some extent procedurally generated by your experiences once you get started.

Starting a company is more like buying an option than a lottery ticket.

You’re buying the right to find out whether you could build something big. The upside is huge, and the downside is limited.

So what does this option cost? What are you giving up when deciding to try starting a startup?

Career cost: almost zero.
After six or seven months, if it doesn’t work out, you’ll still qualify for the same jobs you could have had before – and probably better ones. EF founders who don’t succeed often go on to roles at startups, big tech companies or AI labs, or VC funds.

Financial cost: lower than ever.
If you join our program, it means you’re literally paid to test whether you could be a great founder. It’s not a luxury lifestyle, but it’s enough time and space to try.

For talented, ambitious people early in their careers, who think they might have what it takes to succeed, this option is wildly underpriced.

For a small investment of time, you can learn one of the most valuable things about yourself – whether you can build something extraordinary. If you’re a smart, ambitious engineer, scientist, or hacker, you have an option that didn’t really exist a couple of decades ago. And it’s worth taking.