Millennials Selling Out

Millennials are more likely to start businesses, but they're looking for the exit.

Image: iStockphoto

Been there, done that, got the Twitter followers. And now Millennials want to sell their businesses.

A new study from the Guardian Life Small Business Research Institute reveals that Millennials—the generation born in or after 1982—are 100 percent more likely to sell their business than their parents and grandparents.

That's right. They're not in it for the long haul, they're in it to win it. And a big exit is the name of the game. Part of the reason is that the Great Recession has forced this generation into a new normal where making money in the traditional way of rising up a corporate ladder is no longer a possibility for a large number of them.

So since they're graduating into an economy with high youth unemployment, more and more Millennials are founding their own companies as their first experiences out in the workplace. By the time they're called boss, founder, or CEO, only 8 percent of young entrepreneurs are likely to have inherited the family business, the study found. And though they may not need to bootstrap their companies financially thanks to the multiple funding options available these days, they're certainly bootstrapping their experiences, many of them learning valuable skills and management capabilities on the job.

And as if a crash course on entrepreneurship wasn't enough, Millennials are predicted to do it again and again. The study found that this generation is likely to have up to 12 jobs over their lifetime, meaning that serial entrepreneurship must run in their veins. Maybe there was something in the water in the early 1980s.

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