Getting started early
The other day I read some astounding statistics on Swedish university graduates. Apparently, something like 40% want to become “entrepreneurs”.
However, less than 1/10 of these students will ever start a company with one employee or more, but most troubling is that many will never even try. In fact, most people will never ever be involved in any kind of startup activity.
I usually evaluate new ventures in terms of risk and reward. And from what I can tell, people’s reluctance to start companies isn’t a matter of reward (40% apparently has it their life dream, all the richest people are entrepreneurs etc.), but of risk.
Simplified, the concept of “risk” involves the assets - time, money, social capital etc. - “wasted” if you fail. Which, in all honesty, you probably will.
My experience is that most people hate wasting time more than anything else. Fear of wasting money is what makes it hard for people to formalize their commitment. And fear of wasting social capital is what makes it hard for people to get going for real.
Getting around this is actually easier than it seems. It’s all about getting the sequence right. Here we go:
Waste a lot of time, which might mean you have to down prioritize pretty much everything else. You have the time. It’s all a matter of priority. If you cannot convince yourself to reschedule your life in order to get started with your great idea, I suggest you go find an idea that makes you drop everything else. Or go back to your life as it was.
After wasting time comes wasting money. You probably need to spend some cash initially to get rolling (usually not much, but ironically always more than you can spare at the time) and in some cases, you actually need to quit your day job. But if you’ve followed my instructions, this part is easy since the money you might loose will be offset by all the time invested and the alternative cost you’ve assumed by dropping everything else.
And since you’ve already risked so much time and money, all that social capital you’ve collected since grade school won’t seem so important anymore. So you go out, proudly proclaim that you believe you’re in perfect position to put a dent in the universe (well aware that you may not be), raise some money if needed and then there’s no turning back.
Easy as pie.
But we’ve left out one thing. Likelihood of success, or risk of failure, depending how you look at it. This is the other culprit except for time when it comes to why people procrastinate in the beginning, and end up doing nothing.
The idea here is to increase the likelihood of success by acquiring more knowledge, contacts etc. which often means getting a job, keeping your old one or going back to school. And this is probably true, working at great company to learn how you can better run your own probably does improve your odds.
But it’s a slippery slope.
Reducing risk by investing time in more experience needs to be balanced with that your downside is likely to increase. The older you get, the more is at stake. Mortgages, family and all that jazz. Also, the older you get the less time you you have that can be realistically rescheduled - missing a few nights out with your friends is all good, missing out on your kid’s school play is not.
Increased likelihood of success often comes with a decreased likelihood of doing it at all. There’s no way around it. And the reward pretty much stays the same.
My advice is to stop thinking about the likelihood of success altogether (exceptions apply) and just get on with it. If you have a great idea you feel passionately about just go for it. The odds of success are miniscule regardless of experience, and the best way to improve your own odds of succeeding ever is to do something, learn from your mistakes and then try again. By doing this you will increase your chances by at least 100%, which would probably be very hard to do by working for someone else.
The way to hack all this might be to go work at someone else’s startup, which is just plain awesome if you come to the right place. Having at times been both startup employer and employee I can say with 100% certainty that the “doing your own thing” and “ownership” dimension of running a startup is overrated, and a topic for another post.
However, working with people you admire and having a tangible influence on the process of building products that people use and love, is not overrated. I always felt just as motivated to succeed when working at other people’s startups as when I run my own.
There’s nothing quite like working on stuff you love with people you like. And there’s (most likely) no excuse for you not doing it right away.
By the way - if you want to work at a place where people aspire to do great things, email me - gustav at burtcorp.com. We’re currently hunting for a stellar web designer and rockstar developers.
