Social status is essential to every individual whether they may or may not be aware of it and admit the importance of social status in their lives. Even in the case of Bumiputera graduates entrepreneurs, they acknowledged that social status is beneficial in businesses although some of them were reluctant to admit the importance of social status. That is not surprising because the Bumiputera has a culture of communicating indirectly. Being too honest is considered insensitive or rude. Interviews with seven Bumiputera graduate entrepreneurs in Klang Valley found that they have other ways to describe social status. To them, social status represents their view of themselves, their feeling of satisfaction, and the attention given to them. These elements change according to their achievements or failures in their lives. The model of social status attainment experience by the Bumiputera graduate entrepreneurs is also illustrated in this paper.

In 2020, 202,400 from 5.36 million graduates in Malaysia were unemployed. Although the unemployment may have happened mainly because of the COVID-19 pandemic and various Movement Control Order (MCO), 16,000 of them were already unemployed for more than a year. The situation has raised a question as to why they did not become entrepreneurs. Hence, the researcher interviewed seven Bumiputera graduate entrepreneurs to understand the sociological aspects impacting the business endeavours among the graduates. The sampling techniques used were purposive and snowball sampling techniques. The researcher found that the ultimate reason for getting into universities is to be employed, not to do business. Bumiputera also does not have entrepreneurial culture. Instead, they have a culture of working for others. Although most participants were aware that social status is important for social networks that are crucial for business development, some thought that it is not essential for them because they only want to do business just to survive. Their past working experience also played a vital role in leading them to become entrepreneurs.