In the April 2009 issue of Inc, Jim Collins, author of Good to Great, Built to Last and How the Mighty Fall, had the following to say about entrepreneurship and how it relates to risk:

Students used to come to me at Stanford and say, I’d really like to do something on my own, but I’m just not ready to take that much risk. So I took the job with IBM. And I would say, you’re not ready for risk? What’s the first thing you learn about investing? Never put all your eggs in one basket. You’ve just put all your eggs in one basket that is held by somebody else. As an entrepreneur, you know what the risks are. You see them. You understand them. You manage them. If you join someone else’s company, you may not know those risks and not because they don’t exist. You just can’t see them, and so you can’t manage them. That’s a much more exposed position than the entrepreneur faces. But there’s lower ambiguity on the paint-by numbers path (end result is guaranteed); very clear but more risky. The entrepreneurial path: very ambiguous but less risk. Of course, the truth is that it’s all ambiguous, anyway. If you think you can predict the future, you’re crazy.

Do you agree with Jim that working for yourself is less risky than working for someone else? I do agree that as an entrepreneur you will always know the full story within your business, the risks, the rewards, the opportunities and at the end of the day you ultimately have the ability to make something happen, good or bad.