[danm07]

I was an economics major (also technical) who started his own company in college. Generally it doesn't help, or at least not that I noticed.

Economics is mostly theory about how the world should operate based on certain laws... supply and demand etc. They go through rigorous derivations using calculus and statistics. You might get a top level overview of the driving forces behind an industry, but in a startup that's hardly useful.

Also in microeconomics, you are taught how a prototypical consumer might behave under canned conditions. Not at all representative of the real world.

There's really a single law book for running startups, and the first commandment is talk to your customers. Literally everything else is bs, at least in the beginning stages.

[ohashi]

I feel like we took different values from an economics degree. I also have one, but it wasn't really the details about Macro or Micro at an intro level (which is where you get told all these laws, before more advanced stuff just tells you how they aren't quite right). It's more about a way to think about a problem or set of problems. The only hard skill that I'd say I got out of it was being able to do regression analysis (which has proved useful many times). But the more valuable skill was opening my mind to another way to look at and approach problems. Certainly the vocabulary and basic understanding of the area also helps when dealing with business. It's not the only lense to look at a problem, but as an entrepreneur, I think it's one I have to look through a lot and quite regularly. Something as simple as opportunity cost, that's a daily trade off at a startup. Knowing some behavioral economics might help you make better and more informed decisions rather than simply going with your gut in situations where you gut might be misleading you. That's maybe harder to quantify, but I think it helps more than you give credit.

[appleiigs]

I have a finance career and am also the technical partner of a startup. This answer mirrors my opinion. Economics is nearly 100% theoretical and not useful at all for entrepreneurship which is nearly 100% practical.

Most other answers here are confusing finance or accounting or business-sense for economics... which shows how little they know about economics. And by the way, formal finance and accounting also has little value for an entrepreneur too (just hire an accountant).

My startup partner has a background in marketing and is doing great building the business (while being inept in finance, accounting, technology or economics). If you aren't familiar with marketing, as said above, it's all about knowing your customers.

[dprophecyguy]

Thanks, danm07, now it makes sense often time people don't differentiate in between knowledge and applied skills. I was asking for things that are applied in real world and also take me better decision talking to customers is also the way I am moving forward too.