A few months ago, I wrote an article on how to come up with business ideas. I basically said to look at the world with a critical eye, and to keep track of everything that seems to suck. I still maintain that philosophy, and I recently discovered something about my "passions" in life: Everything I aspire to do is directly related to something that I dislike. I hate education, and I always have. School has never been a fun place for me. In elementary school, I was bored out of my mind. My 5th grade teacher discouraged me from my entrepreneurial pursuits. High school was more about dealing with girl drama than it was about learning meaningful things. By having spent more than 80% of my life suffering through these traumatic experiences, I've become interested in something that I've forever dreaded. While I'm yet to do anything super innovative to help the world of education, my past project internshipIN.com was a start in that direction. I realized that most of my learning came from working at a company, and so I spent my limited free time on helping students find real world internships. More recently, I decided that I hated accounting, I hated finance, and I hated money (although I enjoy the idea of having it). Managing finances is the one thing I despise most in building a company, and nothing stresses me out more than thinking about money. It's the root of all evil, it causes people to kill, it leads to people going to jail (think Madoff), and yet it's the biggest driving force behind every person's life aspirations. So I built a startup, Indinero.com, around the idea of making money suck less for businesses. It's something I plan on dedicating my career to. One of my friends in the investment world recently asked me why I'm building Indinero. After all, why would any young college student want to work on a finance startup? I think about my life as doing two primary things: Minimizing my risk, and minimizing my dissatisfaction with the world. This is an odd way to think about things, because most people think about their life in the opposite way. But I've come to realize that minus the shitty things that happen in life, I'm an optimally happy person. If I can remove the things that crush my soul, I'd be a happier person, and the world would theoretically be a better place. What would you rather do: Make the world a better place, or prevent it from sucking as bad as it does? I'd pick the latter, because it embraces the fact that the world is far from its optimal state. As my friend Manu told me, "make sure you're creating a painkiller instead of a vitamin." As I write this article, I'm suffering from the worst cold I've had in years. I'd pay anything to make this go away, and no cold medication has worked. So thinking about life from my current unhappy perspective, I see the world as a crappy place to live, and I'd be 10X happier if I simply wasn't unhappy. What a seemingly simple idea! Because think about it: during the happiest moments of your life, you probably didn't have anything special or unique that made you happy. But in each and every one of these happiest moments, you lacked the things that would otherwise drive you mad. This past summer was the happiest time of my life. I lived on ramen (literally), I shared a tiny Berkeley home with my team members at Indinero, and I was at the peak of my happiness despite my having zero material assets and close to zero fulfillment in my career. But I didn't have the two things that stress me out most: 1) school and 2) money issues. Between being on summer break and having $35k in the bank (and a startup that creates software that helped cure my finance concerns), I couldn't be happier. Or in more meaningful terms, I couldn't be happier with my life. I'm going to suggest the inverse of what Tony Hsieh from Zappos.com preaches. He's big on figuring out what makes you happy, and it was inspiring for me to see. But being honest with myself, I felt that it wasn't very satisfying because it just seemed too idealistic for even my liking. If you gave someone a week to think about what makes them happy, they still won't be able to give you the correct answer. People are generally bad at thinking of what makes them happy, so instead of focusing on happiness, I think it's much more practical to focus on unhappiness because it's much easier for us to identify and eliminate. Identifying sources of unhappiness is the easy part. Eliminating them is the difficult part. but it's what makes life seem more interesting. I think entrepreneurs are so fascinating because they first eliminate that point of dissatisfaction in their own life, then dedicate their remaining time to helping others eliminate it too. My mom is a prime example: growing up in a poor family, she had no choice but to wear her older brother's hand-me-downs. There's nothing more depressing than a teenage girl wearing her older brother's ugly clothing. So as a 13 year old, my mom designed and sewed her own clothing. Soon later, she started doing this for others. Fast forward a few decades, and it's the driving force behind her career and the jobs of hundreds of people. As pessimistic as it sounds, I think that identifying your sources of unhappiness is the most effective and honest way for you to live a better life. (and find ideas for your next company) What do you hate? How can you turn it into helping yourself and ultimately helping others? And that's the key to happiness.

I've found this to be true across every type of relationship: friends, family, colleagues, classmates, and of course, significant others. My parents complain to me that my brother doesn't call them as frequently as I do... and they complain not just because my brother doesn't call them, but because their expectations of communicating with my brother are simply different from theirs. Or how about that school project where all 5 of your team members seem to suck? One of my classmates was complaining that all of the nerds in his computer science class weren't putting in any work, but it's not a problem of work ethic so much as its a problem of not setting proper expectations from day one.

When I was recruiting our lead product person to join Indinero, he had already prepared himself to tell me he wasn't interested. His reasoning had nothing to do with the idea, the team, or anything related to the business. He was just scared that our expectations of him would far exceed what he was capable of, when we were actually on the same page all along. Since then, he's been tremendously helpful to the company.

How often do you hear of personal relationships not working out? In almost every case of a breakup, it's that the expectations were off. The guy wanted a casual relationship, the girl wanted more. It's very instinctual, but most people just don't communicate these things. So when the guy starts talking about what he wants in his next girlfriend, the girl's shocked to find out that he hadn't even considered her for marriage. What a disaster...

Not only should expectations be set, but they should be higher than what you're personally expecting. It's like financial planning - you have your "ideal scenario", but in the back of your mind, you know you'll never hit those benchmarks.

Set high expectations, expect low results. Then you'll never be disappointed again!

Since childhood, I've associated computer science with geeky and socially inept little boys, and for rational reason: because all of the computer geeks I knew were in fact geeky and socially inept little boys! But as I mentioned in my previous post about computer camp, I've wanted to go into tech from an early age -- before the idea of entrepreneurship ever occurred to me. However, as I became less socially inept, I began associating myself with the non-geeks. The jocks! The cheerleaders!

People often ask me if I feel as if I'm being taken advantaged of, or if being a girl makes things more difficult. No and yes -- I don't feel as if guys are mean to girls in computer science. If anything, guys are more willing to help a cute girl debug her code for obvious reason. But is it more difficult? From a social standpoint, definitely. Most girls in tech are podcasters or videobloggers -- Veronica Belmont, Julia Allison, and Alana Taylor among them. They're all great people, amazing at what they do, but that leaves few girls who are hardcore geeks. There aren't many girls starting their own companies. It's almost expected that I go into community or marketing, but I've since decided to go against these societal expectations.

I'm now at a crossroads in my educational career because I need to decide my major. Do I major in computer science, economics, international relations, or what? As a friend of mine mentioned, what if I'm terrible at computer science or what if I'm terrible at economics? The educational path I choose will determine the people I associate with in my classes. The computer science program at Simon's Rock attracts the uber geeks, whereas the economics program attracts the more popular kids. Why does this matter so much? Because I see education as being more than what's learned in the classroom -- it's the independent projects that I would start with my classmates. It affects my social life, which matters more than you might think for girls. Regardless as to what major I choose, I'll plan on surrounding myself with both econ and comp sci people.

As time goes by, the negative image of computer science and geeks will fade away. With more "socially capable" individuals in computer science, people like myself will feel more inclined to choose a math or science related subject as a major. I met Leah Culver at a dinner in Amsterdam, and her story is inspiring. She went to school thinking that she'd go into art or graphic design, and left with a degree in computer science. She did what she felt passionate about, and others like myself will follow in a similar path. Just last week, I met a girl through my blog named Cassie Wallender, who also began college at age 16 and took up programming and business from an early age. In the coming few years, we'll hopefully see more and more girls flooding the halls of science departments!

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore at early college, Bard College at Simon's Rock.

She loves chatting with fellow students, readers, and entrepreneurs, so don't hesitate to email her or message her on AIM! Feel free to subscribe to her blog or stalk her twitter.

This post was inspired by a discussion in my psychology class about how money doesn't buy happiness

Few of us are born entrepreneurial. We're geeks! We're engineers. We love computers, we love programming, and we've known this from an incredibly early age. Many people ask me when did I get into this geeky entrepreneur stuff. Well, easy! I remember tinkering with my Windows 3.1 desktop since kindergarten days. Daddy would teach me how to use the control panel, how to install/uninstall my kindergarten computer games, and I got hooked. I went to computer camp starting in 5th grade and started coding in C and C++. I didn't know that I'd one day call myself an entrepreneur. Ask the Google guys or Bill Gates what they were doing in elementary school and they'd probably reply with something quite similar. All of them stumbled on doing their entrepreneurial ventures not so much for the purpose of getting rich, but rather because they truly wanted to pursue their own projects and interests. The money is great, but the means are even greater.

This precisely answers why multi-level-marketers are NOT entrepreneurs: they don't care about what they're doing or what they're selling. They're obsessed with the idea of getting rich, and the means of getting there doesn't matter. They aren't invested in the process of creating a business and few of them are capable of it anyway. To start a company based on the idea of getting rich is probably not in your best interest for two reasons:

1) High expectations = high likelihood of being disappointed. Chances are, your business is going to fail. I know plenty of successful entrepreneurs who start new companies that fail, but with low expectations, they're able to get on their feet and start anew. If my expectations for starting a company are to have a good learning experience, there's no way that I can fail.

2) Money seeking entrepreneurs often fail because they over-plan, over-expect, over-demand, etc.. For small web/tech startups, it makes most sense to get a startup off the ground without much planning. If it fails, great. If it doesn't, even better! Plans are good for thinking things out, but they're often irrelevant because your company is likely to go in different directions from originally planned.

Entrepreneurs in business solely for money will hate their jobs. They'll get bored and impatient until they cash out their millions. Because of their disinterest in the means, these money seeking "entrepreneurs" prioritize short term gain over long term benefits. The term "money doesn't buy happiness" has some truth to it -- sure, money is what all entrepreneurs inevitably want, but it comes down to whether or not they're interested in the process of creating a project and turning it into a business in order to better pursue their interests.

Real life example: For the project that I just announced I was starting, one of my partners was thinking about planning things out and revenue models and all of that jazz - but personally, neither me nor my cousin are interested in that. We just want to make something new and awesome. I'll take care of the business development and revenue, but only because that's something I have A LOT of fun doing.

The point is, we didn't start or end as "entrepreneurs." True entrepreneurs always had a love for doing what they do, and they decided to be entrepreneurial because it gave them more opportunities to explore their interests and to create cool things. They care about money, but wealth isn't a requirement for entrepreneurs to want to start companies. Keep this in mind before you start your next company.

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore at early college, Bard College at Simon's Rock.

She loves chatting with fellow students, readers, and entrepreneurs, so don't hesitate to email her or message her on AIM! Feel free to subscribe to her blog or stalk her twitter.

It's great that geeks in the San Francisco Bay Area are proud to be geeks. In high school, many were bullied and sat at the loser tables in the school cafeteria, but now they're the ones running multi million/billion dollar companies. But I'm going to bring up something else -- because geeks felt suppressed in high school, many would even put down other geeks or prospective geeks in the process to make themselves feel better. In my freshman year of high school, I was part of the A/V club, where pretty much everybody in the group was an asshole. Why did I join? Because I was a loser and utter failure in the social world.

The geek culture I knew in high school was very different from the one I see now. There was a clear social hierarchy -- the seniors were the bosses, had first dibs on anything, and enjoyed making fun of us freshmen. There were no second chances: Every student had to do some A/V chores in order to stay in the club, and I missed an assignment because I was sick. The consequence? The geeks were total meanies to me. They were joking about how I'm not sure if they were just being mean or if they were being serious, but either way, they didn't make the members feel welcome.

In Silicon Valley, we believe in constructive criticism. In high school, the geeks believed in non-constructive insults. "Your business sucks. Your code looks like dog crap. Your computer hardware sucks like my grandma." It was just all around nasty and cruel. So here were the upperclassmen, who had extreme power to do and critique as they wished, but in the cafeteria and in the sports fields, they were bullied. They were the ones who sat on the sidelines, bullied by the hot athletic guys. I felt bad for the geeks, but I understood that the social hierarchy existed in order for them to compensate for the interactions they had outside of the A/V club.

Within a few months of joining the A/V club, I left. I was frustrated by the authoritative power the seniors took on, and soon after, most of the club members left too. It all came down to incompetent leadership and seniors who didn't know how to collaborate and keep the clubs most valued members. People join clubs and companies mostly to be with other great people. The problem of mean and grumpy leadership is a problem inherent in so many companies today -- I've spoken to at least a dozen people who said they work or worked at Oracle, but they hate the culture. They feel as if they're nobodies, so their stays at the company are always short lived. The moral of the story? Don't bully your employees. Keep them happy. Encourage them and give them constructive input. They're happy to have your company, club, or organization as a new home. Let's keep it that way.

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore at early collegeBard College at Simon's Rock.

She loves chatting with fellow students, readers, and entrepreneurs, so don't hesitate to email her or message her on AIM! Feel free to subscribe to her blog or stalk her twitter.

The following post was inspired by Jim Collins, author of best selling books Built to Last & From Good to Great

A big hairy audacious goal (BHAG) is something everybody and every organization should have because it creates a goal to aspire to. It creates meaning for yourself and your colleagues. It gives you a sense of purpose! Without a big hairy audacious goal, how does one motivate him or herself to do remarkable things in life?

When I was thirteen years old, my first BHAG was to setup a cool company. My last company thrived on the fact that it was run by 13/14/15 year olds. Once we had something going, we reset our BHAG to owning a rack full of servers. After that, we reset a BHAG to getting an entire cage at multiple datacenters, and that's about when we died. It was good that there was a mental gap between our confidence, wisdom, and capability for taking risk. In other words, young kids are ignorant. Setting a BHAG is fun and motivating, regardless of how stupid or farfetched the goal may be. In fact, that's the point! If we had gone through the conventional planning of business, we wouldn't have started a company until graduating from college. I probably wouldn't have gotten into early college. I probably wouldn't have decided to start a blog that's based on my few experiences. I probably wouldn't have had the pleasure of meeting all of you!

Big hairy audacious goals don't have to be limited to business. Apply this to your personal life. Do the non conventional because it'll foster your motivation and success. The idea of going to college early sounded outlandish to my parents and my friends, but that was precisely the point. If they had supported me on making the change, it wouldn’t be a big hairy audacious goal, now would it?

Of course, if the goal is achieved, there no longer is a BHAG. Once achieved, it's time to set a new goal -- perhaps this is the reason why entrepreneurs are "never satisfied," regardless of the success they previously achieved. So let's say I run a company called Powerset and my goal is to oust Google from the search market. Once I've succeeded in doing this, it's time to set a new goal -- perhaps, to oust the leader in online advetising -- and after that, to oust the leader in online entertainment… etc.

Of course, sometimes it's reckless to go for your big hairy audacious goal. A lot of the time, the critics are right in that the product you want to create will go nowhere, depending on the capabilities of your team. If I ever faced such an issue, I would turn to my "board of life." (click here if you don't know what the super important board of life is) I'd see what they thought about my BHAG, and I would ask what's needed in order to execute on my outlandish vision.

Once you've established what your BHAG is, YOU NEED TO COMMIT TO IT. Set milestones. Make sure your team meets those milestones. I set a BHAG to own my own datacenter within 3 years of starting the company. I invested 80% of the company's profits towards buying assets and renting DC space. Of course, we failed at achieving the BHAG, but at least we died trying. As I'll mention in another post, there are a few things a company can do: 1) grow, 2) fail, and 3) go nowhere. Going nowhere is by far the worst. Not growing is not an option for me. The opportunity cost in going nowhere exceeds any cost of failing. So we chose to sell out prematurely, thus failing. It was unfortunately the right choice to make based on the circumstances.

Committing to a BHAG is obviously 1000X harder than setting the BHAG. You're putting your money on the line. You're putting your business on the line. You're putting your personal well being on the line, and it's a tough commitment to make. Unfortunately, I don't know how to teach someone to feel content when committing to a BHAG. It just has to be done, and if it doesn't get done, you're going to find yourself paying a much heavier opportunity cost. True entrepreneurs are willing to make these commitments. If you’re not willing to make such a commitment, I suggest you join one of those multi-level-marketing schemes.

It's important that BHAGS take on a life of their own. They must be goals in themselves that your team members will always seek to achieve. The main question is, will the BHAG outlast the leader? This poses a problem for super charismatic leaders, or overly-demanding disciplinarians. At that point, the goal is to satisfy the leader -- not to reach the goal. Perhaps this is precisely why over-protective parents are ineffective in parenting. Children do what the parent says, but they don't understand the underlying goals and purposes for achieving those goals. Once the leader (or in this case the parent) is gone, there's no longer a sense of purpose.

If you don't currently have a BHAG in your life, set one now. Matter of fact, I won't let you leave this blog post until you've established at least a basic idea for what your BHAG for life may be. Think it through and remind yourself everyday how you might be a step closer towards achieving your goal.

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore at early collegeBard College at Simon's Rock.

She loves chatting with fellow students, readers, and entrepreneurs, so don't hesitate to email her or message her on AIM! Feel free to subscribe to her blog or stalk her twitter.

I'm sitting in a panel moderated by Guy Kawasaki and he wanted the panel to be women only, which got me to think about the different type of women entrepreneurs there are.

Firstly, many women entrepreneurs I meet seem to run a business geared towards other women. Most of the women on this panel had businesses that target women. This isn't a problem at all. If anything, it can be a smart thing. My mom, for example, makes clothing for women not just because she knows that business best, but because it makes more money than men's clothing does.

Whenever I'm introduced to a female entrepreneur, it's almost as if I'm expected to make friends with them. I don't make friends with many women in business and tech for some reason, but there shouldn't be anything wrong with this. To the guys: just because you're a guy doesn't mean you'll automatically click with other guy entrepreneurs! Same thing applies to girls. When I meet a new girl, I see if they fit into the following categories. If they do, fine. If not, better. Personally, I dislike the idea of girls who fit into cookie cutter categories, but there are so few of us who can truly be considered unique. Here are the stereotypical categories that I commonly see:

1) The geeks: I meet many girls who are incredibly friendly, but they're geeks. They spend the majority of their time working, working, and working. I find it hard to click with the hardcore female geeks because they don't believe in fashion or partying. You may not see many of these girls because they're so incredibly sheltered.

2) The blogger chicks: These girls may or may not have a functional business, but they sure know how to write! They often attract overly obsessed and sketchy guys. I can safely say that these are the girls you're probably most exposed to. Such blogger chicks include the likes of ijustine.

3) The suits: For some reason, men in suits have an intimidating vibe behind them. They don't know jack about technology, but they sure know how to talk. Women in suits can be no different. Meg Whitman, for example, was CEO of eBay.com and is probably incapable of installing a simple PHP script. She's 100% the business type and she does a great job at this, but you don't see a sense of fun or girliness in this type of girl.

So you ask, where do I fit in? Where do my favorite women entrepreneurs fit in? From what people tell me, I can fit into one of these or all of these. Back in computer camp days (yes I used to be a total dork) I would definitely place myself as a geek. Last year when I had no company in the works, I was a blogger chick. Now, I'm seeing myself more and more as all of the above. The girls I generally click with fit into multiple categories. The hardcore geeks have no social life. The absolute hardcore blogger chicks have no aspiration to have a career. The suits come off as being too elitist.

Let's look at a real life example: Patricia Handschiegel. I have so much respect for her as a female entrepreneur because she's a hard worker, yet she's fun and enthusiastic about managing a good work/life balance. Cheers to her recent sale of StyleDiary.net! If only there were more entrepreneurs like her out in the world...

The absolute biggest problem for female entrepreneurs is perception. The above categories can apply to guys to some extent. The popular stereotypes are guy geeks, surfer dudes, and elitist men. In the media, you mainly see the stereotypes. For girls, you mainly hear only about blogger chicks. For guys, you see all of the above categories. If the fun and brilliant female entrepreneurs got some more exposure, we would definitely see more women entrepreneurs out there.

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com, and Jessicamah.com. In her free time, she enjoys the prospect of being an underage angel investor while partying like a rock star. (and traveling to random cities and checking into hotels while being underage)

It's an interesting question... I've had adults, mainly small business owners, ask me to help them setup websites, consult them on some business or marketing ideas, and they eventually come to ask me how much I charge. When I had a crappy dedicated server solutions company, I charged $65 because it was the industry standard. And I still do. About 50% of the time, the prospective client will react by saying something among the lines of,

"WHAT? $65/hour? For a 17 year old? That's outrageous!"

So I'm left not knowing what to say besides something among the lines of,

"Sorry, but if there's anything else I can help you with, or if you ever have some questions about business or websites, I'd be more than happy to help you out."

Which I guess can be interpreted as being nice, but in my mind, I'm thinking about how time cannot be substituted for money, especially if the project I'm working on is of no particular interest to me. Sometimes, I might even feel insulted if I have reason to believe that the person is talking to me because s/he thinks that my young age means that I'll charge less than industry standard. No matter what, I'll get some weird reaction from the person asking me how I justify my own self worth. Details below:

Life is full of priorities and I need to rank them accordingly. I have school, a startup, and quite possibly a social life. Side projects are probably on the bottom of my list if they provide me with no interest value. In everything I do, I need to ask myself the question of whether or not what I'm doing may provide me with some beneficial value years from now. If the answer is no, then the price paid for doing that something better be high. The justification for this, in my mind, is simple: Life is short, life is full of priorities, and I need to decide what to use my time on.

Next, the time it takes to decide on something: If it comes down to making a decision that costs me less than what I rate my time at, there's no point in deciding between expensive and cheap. For example, there's no point in me going bargain shopping for computer monitors if the difference between a Dell and a No-name-brand is under $65. I'll go with Dell, because I know it's at least trustworthy, and I don't have the time to investigate no name brand. The time saved can instead go towards working on my startup or networking with people, both of which can be valued at way more than the price difference between name brands.

Fact is, there's no step by step process that determines how much my time is worth. But when it comes to doing things in a company, the founders will be faced with decisions that may mean a compromise between time and money. Sometimes, just paying more than industry standards is worth the time saved that would normally be allocated towards bargain shopping.

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com, and Jessicamah.com. In her free time, she enjoys the prospect of being an underage angel investor.

Idea for the above blog post inspired by Joel on Software

Interacting with people and building relationships makes me tick. Running a company requires great communication skills and requires that the partners are able to make amazing connections with people they need to meet. I've found myself meeting shy tech engineers at random events, and those are the ones very likely to fail. On the other hand, I've met so many non-geeky San Francisco engineers who need to get out of the office and socialize. Who said nerd stereotypes had to be true?

Brings me to my next point... I was looking for a technical co-founder for my company, and I met some really nerdy guys in the process. They might have been amazing coders, but their lame personalities drove me insane. I finally found this guy, Alex. He's probably reading this blog post, but whatever: On our first meeting, I could tell that we'd click. He was by no means a stereotypical nerd. If the guy enjoys going out and having fun sometimes, he meets my social criteria for a co-founder.

All of the co-founders represent the company, and when it comes time to making business deals and raising venture capital, it really helps to be sociable. I can't see anything more embarrassing than having to bring my super nerdy, boring, shy co-founder to a lunch with the people who can make and break our company.

Fact is, you'll be spending a good part of your work life and possibly personal life with this co-founder. It's a marriage, and once you propose and s/he agrees, you're committed until the very end. How it ends depends heavily on the relationship. The end may be an acquisition by Google for a bagillion dollars or just a divorce that was inevitable.

So what should I say to the geeks who are reading this? Hmm... get yourself a copy of How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie.

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com, and Jessicamah.com. In her free time, she enjoys the prospect of being an underage angel investor.

A friend of mine and fellow JessicaMah.com reader sent me a question the other day - he and pretty much most adults I sit down for coffee with always come to asking me about my post college plans. What do I plan on doing once I'm out of college? Of course, I answer by saying that I'd like to continue being an entrepreneur. Well, I'm sort of doing it already and I know it's what drives me.

Then there's the question of what I plan to do after Google acquires my company for a bagillion dollars? Well, even now... I don't need to work if I didn't want to. I could just sit on my ass all day and not care about the world, but why would I want to do that? I'm an entrepreneur, and for me, it's about the drive. There's just an amazing feeling that goes along with seeing nothing turn into something. Seeing a company exit achieves a few tiny things for me:

1) It proves to my peers, my partners, and my parents that I'm capable of doing business. (aka, doing something meaningful with my life)

2) It satisfies my over enlarged ego.

3) My children will have trust funds waiting for them. (no, I don't believe in that stuff. Let those kids earn their keep)

And once I have all of the above satisfied, I'll probably want more. It's just human nature for me at least to have a goal in mind. If I don't have a goal and a reach goal to reach, there's no point in living. There's so much personal variation to this. For many, multi million dollar exits may lead an entrepreneur to taking time off and just relaxing on the beach. There's absolutely no problem with that. Unlike others, I don't think that type of mentality makes someone a *fake* entrepreneur. They simply have different life goals, and what suits them should be accepted.

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com, and Jessicamah.com. In her free time, she enjoys the prospect of being an underage angel investor.