Recently I came across this study published by Kauffman Foundation. I was surprised to see  some of their findings as I believed/ heard/ trusted a different mantra on entrepreneurship. Here’s my top 10 favorite.

Myth 1 : A successful entrepreneur starts at an early age.

Finding : The average and median age of company founders when they started their current companies was 40.

Myth 2 : An entrepreneur should have a family which has business experience.

Finding : Entrepreneurs don’t always come from families of entrepreneurs; slightly more than half of the sample were the first in their families to launch businesses.

Myth 3 : After marriage or after having kids, launching a company is almost impossible.

Finding : Entrepreneurs are significantly more likely to be married and have children when they launch their first businesses

Myth 4 : Work experience eats up your time, fire, and the zeal to start a new business.

Finding: Entrepreneurs are far more likely to have worked for an employer for more than six years than to have quickly launched their own businesses.

Myth 5 : You should be very rich, to own a company.

Finding: Entrepreneurs are more likely to come from a middle-class or upperlower-class background, and very few come from backgrounds of extreme wealth or extreme poverty.

Myth 6 :  The entrepreneurs are *Super Stars* in their school/ colleges in the academics.

Finding: They performed well in high school and in college, with the vast majority ranking average or above in their respective institutions.

Myth 7 : The entrepreneur launches a company so that he has passion for new ideas, wants to generate employment, yada yada yada.

Finding : Their primary motivations for launching a business are to build wealth.

Myth 8 : An entrepreneur always wanted to be an entrepreneur.

Finding: Roughly half of the entrepreneurs said they did not think about it.

Myth 9 : I became an entrepreneur because I did not get a job using traditional methods.

Finding :  Only 4.5 percent of respondents stated that inability to find traditional employment was an important motivator in starting their own businesses. In fact, 80.3 said that this was not at all a factor.

Myth 10 : You need a co-founder, or a friend’s or family support to launch a business.

Finding: Only 27% of the entrepreneurs felt that, so it means if you want to do it, do it.