To be sure there are examples of individuals who have been successful in areas where they had little experience. For the most part these individuals had a lot of luck or a lot of money to support them while they learned, but they are the exceptions. The average entrepreneur has neither, but what the successful ones do have is industry experience.

Knowledge deficit

The authors of Age and High-Growth Entrepreneurship stated the following in a Harvard Business Review post;

“We found that work experience plays a critical role. Relative to founders with no relevant experience, those with at least three years of prior work experience in the same narrow industry as their start-up were 85% more likely to launch a highly successful start-up.”

History itself can be a great teacher and as Winston Churchill once said in a speech to the House of Commons “Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.” There are many examples from history that entrepreneurs can draw upon to support or justify why those individuals with industry experience have a greater chance at success.

What most people overlook is that having industry experience is a massive competitive advantage. It gives you the knowledge to spot an opportunity from the inside that is invisible to an outsider. This is by no means a guarantee but having industry experience can minimizes potential missteps that are not clearly visible to the outsider.

Klondike (Yukon) Gold Rush

One of the most interesting comparisons that I can make to todays rush to entrepreneurship is that of the Klondike Gold Rush. Once the news leaked out that gold was discovered in Dawson City in the Yukon in 1896, the stampede was on.

Much like social media does today, newspapers from around the world wrote extensively about the bonanza. So much so, that in one San Francisco newspaper it was front page news for over a year.

It is estimated that between 100,000 and 300,000 people from around the world, regardless of their experience, quit their jobs, left their families, and headed out on the year long trek to claim their share of the riches. Sadly, many did not get far. Of the potential 300,000 who set out, only 100,000 thousand actually made it to the Yukon and only 30,000 of them got to Dawson City.

It is interesting to note that of the 30,000 who made it to Dawson City, only 2,000 actually found gold and only a handful of those returned home with any.

Access to Yukon in those days required the gold seekers to travel north via ships from ports along the Pacific west coast to Skagway Alaska. This was the jumping off point to the Yukon, but even if you made it this far, many Stampeders, as they became known, were in for a rude awakening and ended many a dream.

Beginning in 1896 the Canadian government would not allow entrance into the Yukon unless the individual had a year’s worth of supplies to sustain themselves. This is one of the reasons that tens of thousands of people could not continue, because they didn’t have the money to buy what was required.

These supplies were split equally between food and equipment and weighed approximately 2000 pounds. Failure to comply, would result in you being turned away at the Canadian border because the government did not want those who were woefully unprepared to even attempt this most grueling journey. Maybe today’s start-ups should be mandated in a similar way, but I digress.

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