Even more importantly, you can do the pre-startup stuff for (almost) free, and put your toe in the water for (almost) free. You can know that you will have some business before you officially launch your company.
I don't think the fraction of people wanting to become self-employed is much higher than in other businesses, though.
A somewhat similar situation exists for small-scale blue collar jobs: hair dressers and nail salons, gardeners, plumbers, and the like. There, too, many young professionals dream of running their own business (I don't have numbers, but it wouldn't surprise me if half the 20-year old employed hair dressers would say they want to run their own shop one day), and it is cheap to test the waters (that sometimes involves borrowing tools or a van from one's employer while working in the weekend 'for friends')
As to the fraction actually making the jump: I wouldn't dare say whether it is higher in software than elsewhere. My gut feeling would say it isn't, compared to the above. It will be different for people working in industries where a single-man business doesn't exist (I work at a shipyard/a post office, and dream of building oil tankers/doing mail delivery of my own one day), but software development isn't unique in that.
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Even more importantly, you can do the pre-startup stuff for (almost) free, and put your toe in the water for (almost) free. You can know that you will have some business before you officially launch your company.
I don't think the fraction of people wanting to become self-employed is much higher than in other businesses, though.
A somewhat similar situation exists for small-scale blue collar jobs: hair dressers and nail salons, gardeners, plumbers, and the like. There, too, many young professionals dream of running their own business (I don't have numbers, but it wouldn't surprise me if half the 20-year old employed hair dressers would say they want to run their own shop one day), and it is cheap to test the waters (that sometimes involves borrowing tools or a van from one's employer while working in the weekend 'for friends')
As to the fraction actually making the jump: I wouldn't dare say whether it is higher in software than elsewhere. My gut feeling would say it isn't, compared to the above. It will be different for people working in industries where a single-man business doesn't exist (I work at a shipyard/a post office, and dream of building oil tankers/doing mail delivery of my own one day), but software development isn't unique in that.