The Entrepreneurial Trap

What happens when a Silicon Valley model of work and innovation is transplanted onto an ordinary college campus?

In a difficult and daunting labor market for young, often debt-ridden college grads, entrepreneurship beckons as a way to be a heroic creator and disruptor while escaping the drudgery of vanilla jobs and the precarity of low-wage work.

Through immersive, compelling, and often humorous narratives and interviews, Victor Tan Chen and Jesse Goldstein explore the lives of students at a public university that has embraced the entrepreneurial spirit. They show how students adopt but also resist and challenge the mind-sets they are taught in entrepreneurship programs, holding on to hopes for more meaningful opportunities in a world that feels increasingly unwelcoming and unforgiving. The Entrepreneurial Trap is a parable for modern capitalism as encountered by an anxious new generation.