[robocat]

Business influence, autonomy, responsibility, variety, opportunity, risk, unclear solutions to open problems : things a small new startup are likely to offer to a 2[0-9] year old and a large business is less likely to.

The question is, do your personality and abilities suit a startup environment? Or is one more fitted to a structured environment? Maybe a short internship would tell.

If someone inexperienced says they want to do a startup, my advice would be to join a business with 40 to 80 employees in a market that interests you, learn how to tell who are the productive people in sales, marketing, operations and development and start a business with a couple of them. Work out which ones are hard working, effective and entrepreneurial and want to begin a business. Knowing who is excellent in areas you are weak in is a critical skill to learn (and I find extremely hard to judge unless working fairly closely with them). Many many businesses don't know who the real key employees are, or are under-valuing/under-appreciating them.

I had opportunity to join the most effective dev and marketer in a business I was working in when 24 and I didn't jump on the opportunity so I missed out (stupid me). I created a similar opportunity many years later, and it is working out very well (although rough for a couple of years).

[robocat]

Conversely, learning how to tell who are lemons, and you must not join is also critical. Just because a few people are doing a start-up that sounds good doesn't mean it is a good idea to join those people. One must also learn to have enough insight to work out if one is a lemon oneself - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

Another great place to learn these skills and to pick the really skilled is in an incubator or shared space. That has also worked for me.