During the meeting of entrepreneurs and investors, which was attended by such iconic personalities as Ben Horowitz, Matt Koehler and Justin Rosenstein. There was a discussion about what the future of entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley will be. In particular, various thoughts were voiced about who should (or should not) become an entrepreneur in the IT field. If you have ever considered the idea of creating and developing your startup, we advise you to read this post.
To begin with, it is quite possible that you do not need to embark on the waves of entrepreneurship and launch your own startup. Already, the market is overheated in the Silicon Valley ecosystem: there are already too many startups and entrepreneurs. Yes, many people think that more startups are needed; but venture investors and experienced businessmen think otherwise. Both points of view are a kind of extreme (and the same extreme is promoted through the media, so it's not surprising that not everyone can immediately understand whether they have an urgent vital need to become an entrepreneur).
The first reason to start your own business and launch your own IT project is your boundless passion for the business and the idea that you want to base it on: you see that you can realize your idea only with the start of your own business and by founding your own company (even from several people). Passion and passion for an idea and a business are factors that are more important than experience: entrepreneurship is hard work associated with the need to constantly deal with challenges and difficulties that life will throw at you.
You need to believe in yourself and start a business only after making sure that you have sufficient minimal knowledge and resources to start. The best thing (both for you and for others) is if the project is launched by an existing team that does not need to be triggered for a long time. Yes, not everyone will be able to invest all their knowledge and experience at once; not everyone is able to optimize their resources and time costs – but most can still implement this approach, which means that it is necessary to approach the start of a new business from this point of view.
If you do not seek to maximize your contribution to the common cause, it is reasonable to assume that you are optimizing your living space and your personal preferences. By the way, the freedom to choose your way of life and the desire for the most flexible schedule and work style is also a sufficient reason to try yourself in the field of entrepreneurship.
Even the desire to work only on one specific problem or only with certain people is a sufficient incentive for entrepreneurial activity. Perhaps launching your own company will give you the fullness of self-realization: instead of spending your time looking for a company that would suit you, maybe just create your own, where everything suits you?
If you decide to become an entrepreneur, there is a Dark Side. That's what should not serve as a motive for starting your own entrepreneurial path: the desire to become your own boss in a large company. Evernote CEO Phil Libin has well formulated the negative side of this aspiration:
People succumb to the stereotype about the CEO of the company: they say, this is a person at the top of the business pyramid who gives orders to everyone. And some people are motivated by this stereotype; but in fact, everything looks different.
This is how it happens in real life: you are not everyone's boss – everyone around you tells you what to do: your subordinates, clients, partners, users, the media – they are your boss. Before I became CEO, I never had so many people to whom I had to report.
The life of most CEOs is the need to report to everyone around; at least, that's how most CEOs I know live. If you like to command and enjoy power over people, join the army or become a politician. But just don't become an entrepreneur for this.
Entrepreneurship and running your own company sound like luxury places. The media have turned many entrepreneurs into real idols, but this is just a colorful narrative, nothing more. In reality, there are many years of work behind the successful stories of big bosses, which you have no idea about, even if you are also moving in the right direction.
Becoming an entrepreneur, you are sure that you are talented, and that talent is the only thing that will help you maximize the financial return from your undertaking. Another misconception. In reality, even some 100th developer in Facebook* receives more money per year than 99% of entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley. If you have such a cool talent, then you can easily identify a company with great growth potential and relatively low risks – and then get generous compensation from them by getting a job with them.
If the years show that you have made a mistake in your assessment of what is happening, you can always try again. In 2-3 attempts, you will receive substantial money for your efforts and at the same time make a significant contribution to valuable and important achievements that can affect the life of the planet. If you decide to launch a new Google or a second Facebook* – you most likely will not succeed at all, you will fail and will be content with much smaller amounts of earnings for many years. It takes a lot of time for success or failure, so do not delay with the choice: you only have a few attempts.
Yes, there are corporations in which employees are treated like in a terrible cartoon, but there are, you know, not bad companies. work for one of these companies or work for yourself; but just for nothing in the world do not stay where at the end of the working day they exhaust the soul out of you.
Yes, this position sounds selfish. But the best entrepreneurs found the best projects (or at least become the best employees in good companies). Entrepreneurship always has, in addition to personal gain, a macro effect from the realization of talent beyond a narrow framework (as there is also a micro effect from unrealized opportunities and skills). You should become an entrepreneur only if you are sure that you are striving for this macro effect.
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