I grew up where there were more bears than people. I never found a way to sell anything to them, but I did figure out how to chase them away from our garbage with my hockey stick.

I've kind of tried it, even worked in a micro-company that was one step removed from it, but I saw how it can be difficult to make any sort of consistent money at all for quite a while.  I did that all before while I was a poor student although. 

Tynan didn't drop college until you had a semi-consistent cash flow in poker for example.   If someone stumbles onto something like that while they're going the default life path, it can be a lot easier to do it.

I'm a software developer and I'm in high demand right now, so having the job is good for me while I establish myself financially. I've achieved many financial goals in 1.5 years of working (paid off student loan, purchased decent motor vehicle, purchased a bunch of geeky tools, etc) so after maybe I save a bit more and buy around $10k in big ticket items (eye surgery, a vacation for once) I might consider going it on my own.

The thing is, after seeing mr. money mustache and early retirement extreme's example, you can just save 50-80% of your cashflow and in 5-8 years achieve financial independence.  Once you have that independence, you can then launch into very interesting ventures. Even with the shittiest of wages as markus of EEE demonstrated.

Tynan, I agree 100%.  Here's a blog I wrote about this very topic: http://www.danielodio.com/2012/03/14/high-school-students-vs-mbas/

And specifically, starting at a young age is very important.

It's definitely learned and not genetic, but learning it at a young age makes a huge difference; risk tolerance only goes down with age, which is ironic when you consider the more of your life you've already lived, the less risk there is you might mess up the amount that remains.  Funny how the human psyche works.

I used to ride to the convenience store at lunch hour and buy candy which I would sell at a markup in class. Pretty much every day I would make enough money to buy a comic book. Eventually, I had a huge comic book collection and sold half of it to a comic book store, and bought my first modem, which I used to start a BBS when I was 13 years old. 

I was very eager ice hockey card dealer in the first classes of school. Later when I was 16, I had couple of jobs in telemarketing.  Now I work for myself in my own projects.

There is excellent TED talk on this topic:
http://www.ted.com/talks/cameron_herold_let_s_raise_kids_to_be_entrepreneurs.html

1. Yes
2. Was able to accumulate maybe $700 or so from things like taking advantage of AllAdvantage toolbars and a few other things that can't be mentioned publicly. It was all about exploiting loopholes on the internet, and I guess I'm still doing it, but full-time.

Now to figure out this futures trading...