BestOnlineCollege.org is an advertising-supported website. Many of the school and program listings that appear on this site are from partners who compensate us, and this compensation may affect how, where, and in what order listings appear (such as featured placements). This compensation does not influence our editorial content, evaluations, or rankings, which are determined independently using publicly available data. We do not review or feature every school or program available in the marketplace. Our goal is to provide accurate, unbiased information so you can make informed decisions. Read our full Advertiser Disclosure.
How to Become an Entrepreneur: Degree, Steps & Salary (2026)
Key takeaway: Becoming an entrepreneur requires no degree, license, or credential -- you become one by starting a business. What education changes is how expensively you learn the parts that sink most first ventures: validating that customers will pay, pricing from unit economics, managing cash, and understanding what funding costs you. An entrepreneurship degree or certificate teaches those in a structured way and qualifies you for the salaried roles most founders hold first. Those roles have real wage data: general and operations managers earn a national median of $105,770 and management analysts $101,860 (Bureau of Labor Statistics, May 2025 OEWS national medians). Founder earnings have no BLS figure, because there is no typical founder.
Entrepreneurship is one of the few careers with no gatekeeper, and it is worth being direct about that rather than implying a degree is a prerequisite. Nobody checks your transcript before you register a business, sign a first customer, or take an investor’s money. What a degree changes is the odds of getting those steps right the first time, and what it provides in the meantime is a credential for the jobs that pay you while you figure out whether your idea is real.
This guide covers the path as founders actually walk it – from the skills you need, through validation and launch, to the decision about funding – and is explicit about where education helps, where it does not, and what the alternatives are.
Step-by-step: how to become an entrepreneur
Build the business foundation. Every venture, whatever the product, runs on the same machinery: revenue and costs, cash flow, pricing, customer acquisition, and legal structure. Founders who cannot read a cash flow statement or compute a break-even discover the problem only when the account is empty. You can build this foundation through an entrepreneurship bachelor’s, a business administration degree with an entrepreneurship concentration, a certificate layered on a degree in another field, or self-study and a mentor. The degree route is the most predictable; the others are cheaper and depend more on you.
Find and evaluate an opportunity. The idea most founders start with is not the one they end up building, and the discipline of opportunity evaluation exists to shorten that gap. Size the market honestly. Identify who the customer actually is and what they do today instead of buying from you. Understand what it would cost to reach them and whether the economics of one sale can ever support a business. Programs teach this as a structured process; outside a program, the same discipline is available from books and from people who have done it, but it is easier to skip.
Validate with real customers before you spend. This is the step the lean startup method formalized and the one first-time founders most often skip. Talk to prospective customers – dozens of them – about the problem before you show them a solution. Build the smallest thing that lets you test whether they will pay. Treat each test as an experiment with a hypothesis and a result. A venture capstone in an entrepreneurship program forces this process on a schedule with feedback; on your own, you have to force it on yourself.
Design the business model and the numbers. Decide how the business makes money: what you charge, what each sale costs to deliver, how you acquire customers and what that costs, and how those numbers change as you grow. Build a financial model that shows how the business reaches break-even and what capital it needs to get there. This is where accounting and finance coursework earns its place; it is also where an investor’s first hard questions land.
Choose a legal structure and handle the basics. Entity formation, ownership and founder agreements if you have partners, intellectual property protection where it matters, business licenses, tax registration, and insurance. None of this is difficult, and all of it is expensive to fix later. A business law course covers the map; an attorney handles the specifics.
Decide how to fund it. Most businesses are bootstrapped from savings, revenue, and founder labor, and stay that way. Debt, revenue-based financing, angel investment, and venture capital each fit particular kinds of businesses and each cost something – interest, control, or ownership. Understanding term sheets, valuation, and dilution before you need to is the difference between a good deal and a bad one, and it is the single area where founders most often report wishing they had formal training.
Launch, measure, and adjust. Get to first customers, watch what they actually do, and change the plan based on evidence rather than on the original vision. Then build the operation – hiring, systems, cash management – that lets the business run without you doing everything. The transition from founder-does-everything to a managed company is the part of the path that small-business management coursework addresses and that many founders find harder than the launch.
What degree do you need to be an entrepreneur?
None. This is the honest answer, and it is also incomplete, because the question people are usually asking is which education makes founding go better and what to fall back on if it does not.
- An online bachelor’s in entrepreneurship delivers the full business core plus opportunity evaluation, customer discovery, venture finance, and a capstone in which you build and pitch a venture. It is also a business degree that qualifies you for the salaried roles founders hold first, which is the fallback most founders eventually need.
- An online master’s in entrepreneurship or an MBA with an entrepreneurship concentration suits someone with a bachelor’s in another field – engineering, science, design, health – and a venture idea rooted in it, or a professional moving into corporate innovation. It is rarely the right first degree.
- An online entrepreneurship certificate is often the best fit for someone already running a business who knows exactly which skills they lack, or for someone who already holds a degree and wants the venture toolkit without the rest.
- A degree in the field of the venture – marketing, finance, engineering, a clinical discipline – plus entrepreneurship electives or a certificate is the path many successful founders actually took. Deep knowledge of a market is often worth more than a general venture toolkit, and the toolkit can be added.
Because most founders work a salaried job first, and many build a business alongside one, the degree is commonly completed online while working. See Is an Entrepreneurship Degree Worth It? for how to weigh that decision.
How much do entrepreneurs make?
There is no honest single answer, and any page that gives you one is guessing. The Bureau of Labor Statistics does not publish a median wage for founders or business owners as an occupation, and the earnings of the self-employed are outside its occupational wage survey. Founder income ranges from nothing for years to more than any salaried role, and most new businesses face real odds of failure regardless of the founder’s education.
What does have reliable data is the set of salaried roles founders hold before, alongside, or after a venture – and those numbers matter, because they are the realistic floor most people in this field build from. General and operations managers, the role closest to running a business on someone else’s payroll, earn a national median annual wage of $105,770 (Bureau of Labor Statistics, May 2025 OEWS national median). Management analysts earn a national median of $101,860; market research analysts and marketing specialists, the most common entry role, earn $78,760; and the senior go-to-market roles founders sometimes grow into or come from – marketing manager at $166,790 and sales manager at $148,270 – sit at the top of the range (all Bureau of Labor Statistics, May 2025 OEWS national medians). Half of workers in each occupation earn more than the median and half earn less, and pay varies substantially by industry, employer size, and geography.
How long does it take to become an entrepreneur?
The answer depends entirely on where you start counting. If you already have the skills and an idea, you can be in business in weeks. If you are building the foundation first, the education adds time up front. The table below lays out the phases as founders typically move through them, with the understanding that many run in parallel and that none of them is a guarantee.
| Phase | Typical duration |
|---|---|
| Education, if pursued: certificate | 6 to 12 months |
| Education, if pursued: bachelor’s degree | About 4 years, or fewer with transfer credit |
| Opportunity evaluation and customer discovery | Weeks to several months, depending on the market |
| Business model, financial model, and legal setup | Weeks to a few months |
| Launch to first paying customers | Highly variable; weeks for a service business, longer for a product |
| Reaching sustainable operation | Commonly measured in years, and never certain |
These are ranges rather than guarantees. Many founders spend years in a salaried role, building capital and a network, before starting – and that path is not a delay so much as part of the process.
Frequently asked questions
What degree do you need to be an entrepreneur?
None. Starting a business requires no credential. An entrepreneurship bachelor’s, a business administration degree with an entrepreneurship concentration, an entrepreneurship certificate on top of a degree in another field, or a degree in the venture’s own field plus business coursework are all common paths, and so is no degree at all. Education changes how expensively you learn the parts that sink most first ventures, and it provides a credential for the salaried roles founders usually hold first.
How long does it take to become an entrepreneur?
Weeks, if you already have the skills and an idea and are starting a service business; years, if you are building the education, the capital, and the network first. Most founders spend time in a salaried role before starting, and many build the business alongside a job. There is no standard timeline.
How much do entrepreneurs make?
There is no reliable figure. The Bureau of Labor Statistics does not publish a median wage for founders, and self-employment earnings are outside its occupational survey. The salaried roles founders typically hold first do have data: general and operations managers earn a national median of $105,770 and management analysts $101,860 (Bureau of Labor Statistics, May 2025 OEWS national medians).
Can I become an entrepreneur while working full time?
Yes, and most do. Customer discovery, business model design, and early validation can be done alongside a job, and the job supplies both income and, often, the market knowledge the venture is built on. Online entrepreneurship programs are designed around the same reality. The decision to leave the job usually comes after the business shows it can pay you, not before.
Do I need funding to start a business?
Most businesses start without outside funding and many never take it. Service businesses in particular can launch on savings and revenue. Outside capital – debt, angel investment, venture capital – fits businesses that need to spend ahead of revenue, and each form costs something in interest, control, or ownership. Understanding what you are giving up before you take it is the single skill founders most often say they wish they had learned formally.
Is an entrepreneurship degree better than an MBA for founders?
It depends on what you already have. An entrepreneurship bachelor’s is the right first degree for someone without one. For someone who already holds a bachelor’s, an MS in entrepreneurship is shorter and entirely venture-focused; an MBA with an entrepreneurship concentration is larger, more expensive, and more portable into conventional senior management. See the master’s page for the comparison.
Related guides
- Online Entrepreneurship Degrees Guide – the full hub covering degree levels and program formats
- Online Bachelor’s in Entrepreneurship – the business core plus the venture sequence
- Online Entrepreneurship Certificates – the venture toolkit without the full degree
- What Can You Do With an Entrepreneurship Degree? – the full range of salaried roles with BLS wage data
- How to Become a Marketing Manager – the go-to-market track many founders come from or grow into
- How to Become a Management Consultant – the advisory path that uses the same analytical toolkit
Wage figures on this page come from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (May 2025 national medians) and describe salaried occupations, not self-employed founders. Business formation, licensing, and tax requirements are set by state and local governments; confirm requirements for your jurisdiction and business type.
Data verified: August 25, 2026. Salary, employment, and tuition figures on this page are sourced from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (OEWS May 2025; Employment Projections 2024–2034) and the U.S. Department of Education College Scorecard (2023 cohort). The source agency and data year are cited inline with every statistic.
Back to Online Entrepreneurship Degrees: Programs & Careers (2026)