It's funny, but my career of choice was being a pilot. I even flew about 10 hours before it got too expensive for me. I was even accepted into Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (pretty much the top aviation school there is). It's unfortunate that it has to be so expensive to fly.
Anyways, if you've already exited your startup and have money to spend, or are interested in aviation at all, I would certainly recommend it. It's one of the best things I've done my entire life.
Believe me, there are plenty of startup opportunities in the aviation industry. A lot of it is broken right now, and people who fix it stand to reap a huge reward.
Go check out http://www.erau.edu/ if you're interested in the college. It's about $40,000/year with the flight training.
Flying sailplanes is much better. And it costs a fraction of flying a powered airplane.
I doubt this is an option in downtown San Fransisco, but if you by chance live in an area where the airspace is a little less tight, soaring is a much cheaper and more "down to the basics" kind of flying. You are yourself fully responsible for finding sources of lift, and if you make a bad decision, you'll have to land.
Flying powered airplanes is a lot more forgiving in all senses - you get multiple shots at landing, you don't have to think too much about the wind direction for fear of getting on the lee side of a ridge, you don't always have to be within gliding distance of a suitable landing site, etc, etc. And you'll actually have to use the rudder pedals, all the time. These restrictions make soaring much more fun. And to top it off: if you do a low-pass over a hiking group in the mountains from a powered airplane, they'll likely think you're a jackass. If you do the same in a sailplane, they'll be surprised it is even possible to fly without an engine.
You do get a lot more freedom if you've got an engine, and I'm not bashing Cessna pilots here. Flying is fun no matter how. But if it's sports you're after, nothing beats gliding. How's this for an intellectual challenge: unless you navigate all around and circle at least every 20 minutes, you'll fall down?
That's $466 per day to go from 0 to airline pilot certificate.
Airline pilots make good money, but leaving one of those schools you really won't have enough experience to get a job as an airline pilot, and if you do, you'll start low (1st officer) and it will take a while before you earn enough to make that back. The big metric in the pilot industry is flight time, and in 150 days you can't get enough flight time to compete with the lifelong pilots.
A good course for many people is to go right into instruction. That way you make some money while building flight time on someone else's dime. This is actually how it works at ERAU. The Juniors and Seniors train the others.
Also, a private license is closer to $10,000 now, mostly because of fuel prices. It used to be a cool $6000 though.
To go from 0 to being able to earn money flying (commercial license) will cost about $20,000 last I checked.
I thought the article applied to me in a funny way. I soloed and got to ~20h before I ran out of capital. Does that qualify me as having startup experience? ;-)
I guess I find the "Why $MyOtherPassion Make Great Entrepreneurs" a little tiresome. It's amazing how it works for painters, rock climbers, actors, pilots, family men, and so on. You know what I find it a lot like? Open Source. Guess why? Can't we just accept that having the drive to do stuff is transferable and move on?
Anyways, if you've already exited your startup and have money to spend, or are interested in aviation at all, I would certainly recommend it. It's one of the best things I've done my entire life.
Believe me, there are plenty of startup opportunities in the aviation industry. A lot of it is broken right now, and people who fix it stand to reap a huge reward.
Go check out http://www.erau.edu/ if you're interested in the college. It's about $40,000/year with the flight training.