Can you even start a business with a math degree?

[kramer733]

So most of my friends who are in more "applicable" programs in university have a desire to start a business. They're in engineering mostly but what kind of business can you even start with a math degree?

I don't really want to be working for somebody my whole life but if you're in engineering and want to start a company, it's obvious that you'll probably start an engineering company down the road when you have more experience as an engineer.

With math, can you even make a statistics or cryptography company? I feel all those things could be done way better by the government and they are. I don't really know any statistics of cryptography companies at all.

[Ryker]

You can start any company you desire with a math degree. The limiting factor, however, is what you are able to pull off, and that isn't determined on a general level by looking at a person's degree. Your degree has nothing to do with the type of business you establish, apart from the (important) factor of knowledge you obtain.

[Choppy]

The thing with starting a business is that you have to have a product or a service that someone needs or wants (or at least a product or service you can convince someone else they need - whether they actually need it or not seems to be a rather moot point these days).

So one of the keys to starting a successful business is identifying a niche area that you have some expertise in. Remember a math degree is not a professional degree. It's part of your education. You have an extra step or two to make to identify a specific service that you can offer. This could involve working for someone else for a few years and seeing how the industry works.

If stats is your game for example, you may want to look at specializing in market research or focus groups. Perhaps you could try to get a job with such an existing company or simply spend some time job shadowing.

Or you could provide a service for social science investigators who collect tonnes of data but would prefer someone else to crunch the numbers.

You could provide a service for law enforcement agencies that ascribe to an "intelligence model" of policing - examining their records and cruching the numbers to identify areas or times of high crime, or more importantly, what police officers are spending their time doing.

Or you could move into something more oriented towards forensic accounting. Insurance companies will pay big bucks to avoid paying much bigger bucks to illegitimate claimants.

Beyond the basics and perhaps what you've learned through a research project and perhaps some independent study, you probably don't have a specific skill you can offer yet. But start casting around and see what comes up. When you look for opportunities, they have a way of finding you.

[kramer733]

Wow thank you very much choppy. That's a really insightful post.