Thoughts on Entrepreneurship

A startup is the land of the extremes – it is incredibly intense and all-consuming, but also incredibly rewarding and fulfilling. You work every waking moment and love every minute of it. There is no middle ground, no easy way to do it – it’s all out or bust.

As an entrepreneur, you will have to live with uncertainty and quickly get comfortable with it; you will have to wear so many hats that your head will spin; you will have to frequently tap your energy reserves; you will drive your body to the limit of its physical strength; you will have to face seemingly insurmountable obstacle almost every morning, and surmount them by dinner time; you will face non-believers and proceed against their best judgment; you will learn to tame fear and at times terror and accept them as a normal course of business. And as if this wasn’t enough, you know that you have a 90% chance of failure, but you completely ignore it and believe in success as if you were predestined to it.

At the same time, as an entrepreneur, you are creating something new, revolutionary, so important that you want to give it all you’ve got; you learn faster than any school or book can teach; you discover abilities that you did not know you had; you gain a surgically precise understanding of your limitations; and when you come through with your first product, you experience the incredible high of having created something from nothing.

Should you do it? Well, do you have a high tolerance to risk? Do you have strong mental and physical endurance? Do you excel at your particular skill? Then my answer is unequivocally yes. It is worth every last effort.