The Best Time to Start Your Own Business?

If you’ve been sitting on a million dollar idea for a while now and have been banging your head against a wall as you ask yourself the same question, time and time again, a new study seeks to answer it for you.

When do I pack in the day job and pursue my own business venture?

Well, you don’t ditch one for the other, you make a slow and steady transition towards the latter, as per Entrepreneur.com, while you’re still employed elsewhere. According to a new study published inThe Academy of Management Journal, if you jump ship too early, you could be setting yourself up for what you fear most: failure.

During this study, professors?Joseph Raffiee and Jie Feng of the University of Wisconsin-Madison discovered that ?hybrid? entrepreneurs are a third less likely to fail than those who take the leap in one fell swoop. Hybrid entrepreneurs refer to those who begin work on their own venture whilst still holding down their 9-5.

?Our findings suggest that risk aversion influences the process of?how an individual decides to start a business (i.e., full-time versus hybrid), not necessarily?whether the individual decides to start a business or not.” say Raffiee and Feng.

Citing successful entrepreneurs such as Steve Wozniak (who worked for Hewlitt Packard whilst Apple was finding its feet) and Henry Ford, this study is said to have found that those who make a slower transition to self-employment ?have much higher rates of survival relative? when compared with those who have a greater sense of urgency about getting going.

So if you’ve been beavering away behind the scenes on an idea that you have the utmost faith in, give it time, let it develop, meet with the right people, and before you consider chucking in the towel on the day job, make sure you’ve got everything you need behind you to give yourself as much a fighting chance as those who make it big.

Good luck!

@CarolineForan