Learn from the biggest start-up failures going around. Us! Start your own company, just don’t do this…

Most engineering and STEM students and young engineers get stuck in the job-seeker mindset. There's nothing wrong with job hunting and employment with a big engineering company.

After all, that's the way most engineering careers still start and it's a great foundation on which to build your brilliant career. There's lots of training and experience and travel and support and a reliable income after 4-5 years of study and causal jobs where the money is usually...well...a long way short of a graduate salary.

Or, you can treat your big company job as a launching pad to something even bigger than you ever dreamed possible...

"Mmmm," I hear you say...?

Well, in Australia, the stories of Worley (www.worley.com) and Nova Systems (www.novasystems.com) - both large employers of engineers across a range of specialisations - are two prime examples of start-ups that have scaled and made it big on the world stage. And both founded or co-founded by engineers! John Grill in the case of Worley and Peter Nikoloff in the case of Nova Systems (with now South Australia Chief Entrepreneur Jim Whalley).

John Grill was a civil engineer and started his career with Esso (now Exxon) before starting his own company. Peter Nikoloff is an aeronautical engineer who spent 20-plus years in the Royal Australia Air Force as a flight test engineer.

So, self-employment could just be the pinnacle of your engineering career too.

To do that, we encourage you to get in the job-creator mindset early - like first year for example - and stay there. Even better if you started in high school.

The results of successful start-ups by engineers confirm that self-determination in industry by having your own company is a great place to be and one of the biggest benefits is that you won't have to worry about finding a job anymore - because you will have just created one for yourself!

And another bonus; starting your own engineering start-up also lifts the cap off your earning potential so your income is simply limited by your own success. Generally speaking, profits are always better than wages.

When you work for companies, your salary and benefits are taxed at marginal rates that, in Australia at least, are relatively high by world standards. By the time you're earning more than $180,000 per annum, which most engineers would aspire to, you're paying nearly 50% in tax on every dollar earned. And when you're paid a salary, except for added responsibilities and promotions, increases are modest and usually in line with the movements in the Consumer Prince Index or inflation.

In other words, low single digits.

Instead, if you can identify and solve a problem, then you may just have a wildly successful start-up on your hands . It will take time and oodles of blood, sweat, tears and resources and investment dollars but salary options and tax treatment is more flexible that for employees earning incomes from an employers. You get to keep a lot more.

In simple terms, it can be a LOT more lucrative!

But, it's easy to say and bloody hard to do!

And that's were we come in. We should know. We've tried three times and failed on every occasion. Consulting businesses, infrastructure services, aviation financing. They just didn't fly!

When we thought we had identified a problem, it turned out it wasn't a problem at all. Similarly, when we thought we had a solution, it was one that nobody was interested in. And when we did find interest, it turned out that no one was prepared to pay for it.

That's three strikes and just like in baseball, we were out.

John Grill and Peter Nikoloff (and Jim Whalley) not only identified a problem, they solved it and their customers were prepared to pay.

That's all you need to do. It's that simple. And that hard!

So, with all our spectacular start-up failures, we reckon we've got some tips on what not to do.

If you don't do what we did and avoid the three fundamental pitfalls, you just might crack it lucky.

Remember, 95% of all start-ups fail. Don't be like us and do what we did.

But do give it a go. Everyone in their life, at least once, should aspire to entrepreneurship.

Why? Because engineers are creatives and curious by education and profession and by nature and that's exactly what entrepreneurs need to be. In the case of fit when it comes to engineering and entrepreneurship, R-squared = 1!

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