The Road Not Taken

Life is mostly defined by the choices we make or don’t make daily and their impacts over time. The same holds true for knowing when, or when not, to start a business. This entrepreneurial leap is scary, lonely, costly, exhausting, and above all else uncertain in outcome. But, starting a business is also full of discovery, invention, problem solving, ego and reward. Only about 16% of the US adult workforce are entrepreneurs according to Babson College’s Global Entrepreneurship Monitor Report. New business creation remains among the top paths for creating new wealth, income, and economic power.

For Vermonters, this startup journey of yours need not be alone. Today, so many high quality, no cost resources and professionals at places like the Center on Rural Innovation (CORI), StartUp Rutland, LaunchVT, DoNorth, VCET’s StartHere Podcast, UVM’s BioLab and the Center for Women in Enterprise are available. Additionally, there are now more active early stage venture funds and high risk lenders in Vermont than ever before. But, all the capital and support organizations in the world do not matter unless this 16% dare to start and build these new main street and high tech businesses. Our brave little state so badly needs you to start and succeed in order to grow Vermont’s population and sustain its economy. It’s that simple. We need you more than ever to take the career path less mainstream and less certain. Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken describes the choices we make and their compounding effects on our journeys. What path will you choose in 2025?

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves, no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

-Robert Frost