Steve Jobs on what separates the successful founders from unsuccessful ones

What are the factors for success for young people today and what pitfalls should they avoid if you're playing the role of older statesman?

For entrepreneurs?

Yeah, for young entrepreneurs.

Oh, I get asked this a lot and I have a pretty standard answer, which is a lot of people come to me and they say, well, I want to be an entrepreneur. And I go, oh, that's great, what's your idea? And they go, well, I don't have one yet. And I say, well, I think you should go get a job as a busboy or something until you find something you're really passionate about, because it's a lot of work. And I'm convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non successful ones is pure perseverance. It is so hard. You pour so much of your life into this thing and there are such rough moments in time that most people give up. I don't blame them. It's really tough and it consumes your life. I mean, if you've got a family and you're in the early days of a company, it's. I can't imagine how one could do it. I'm sure it's been done. But it's rough because it's pretty much an 18 hour day job seven days a week for a while. So unless you have a lot of passion about this, you're going to not survive. You're going to give it up. So you got to have an idea or a problem or a wrong that you want to right that you're passionate about. Otherwise you're not going to have the perseverance to stick it through. And I think that's half the battle right there.