Why engineers make the best entrepreneurs

Do engineering and entrepreneurship go hand in hand?

Entrepreneurship has been one of the most talked about and sought-after career paths and has been glamorized in the recent years by young billionaires like Zuckerberg and Musk.

Engineering and entrepreneurship at first seems like very different paths without natural crossovers, but looking closely, you find that engineering and entrepreneurship share many of the same skills. In fact, many great entrepreneurs and business leaders do in fact have education and training in engineering. Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg and Carlos Slim are just a few of the famous entrepreneurs who all started their careers in Engineering.

Being a competent engineer requires you to solve complex problems and navigate around difficult situations when they arise, a useful skill for any entrepreneur. There is little structure and lots of complexity that you need to navigate daily as someone who is running a start up. You have to assess risks and challenges wisely, and pivot when required.

Both engineers and entrepreneurs take on tremendous amounts of risk in their work. To succeed in both fields you need dedication, commitment and simply put, hustle.

No way can your business venture or any project you start from nothing grow if you don’t acknowledge the fact that you have strengths and weaknesses and realize the need to branch out and get people on your team that will help you with your weaknesses. You need a team as an engineer and an entrepreneur to help you move forward towards a common goal.

Communication is paramount. It is critical to be able to have excellent communication skills in projects to make sure your product is exactly what was planned and perhaps even better.

For both engineers and entrepreneurs, reflection and self-conscious analysis are essential. Both need to examine their projects to prototype better solutions, make changes quickly and persevere even if challenges seem great.

Engineers make great entrepreneurs because they bring a skillset to the startups that’s been developed over years of managing projects and solving big problems.

Enromous amounts of planning go into projects that engineers have to complete. And what can be a bigger project that starting out on a journey of entrepreneurship? So go on, engineers: you are already great at building — time to think about building a company!