This is the question that my mom, my girlfriend(s)(in the past), my wife, friends, bosses, colleagues, employees have all asked me both loudly and sometimes through a sigh or a misplaced glance. It is a very tough question to answer. To be honest I am not sure I even know the answer but years of experience in starting up stuff and either blowing out or giving up gives me some level of experience in that to talk about it here.
I never had it easy in life. No.No.No. I wouldn't say that everything went against me and I was your quintessential down-on-luck guy. For the average and even the above average human being out there, my life is rosy and comfortable enough. But the problem was the one curve-ball that was thrown at me in terms of a physical affliction that I have been living with for about 15 years now. This made me hungry. Greedy. Impatient for success. I wanted to get big and get big as fast as possible.
In my early teens, I lived under the presumption that I deserved that and it should be something that I inherit. When I started college, I realized I needed to put in some effort to get there but never really capitalized on my degree to get there. Come on, an Arts degree in English literature isn't going to get you millions any day soon. When I started to work, I realized that this was going to be too slow to get there and I couldn't stand idiocy and mediocrity which was possibly the main characteristics anyone in the corporate management level possessed and nurtured. That's when I started out for the first time. It flopped. It was a small time software start-up. It folded very quickly and I moved on to my next venture and my next and then my next and the next one too.
I have been involved with about 5 start-ups in my life and although a few of them made me enough money to splurge on luxuries at that point of time, they never amounted to anything earth-shaking. My last one was a game development company that was about started about 3 years back. A great team, a few good projects, amazing environ to work at. It had everything going for it and then it quickly turned into the usual story. The company still exists and there is still a couple of projects running in the same but it is not poised to achieve the lofty goals that was set when we started out. Mismanagement, lack of focus, unnecessary expenditure. These are the mistakes that was committed. Not deliberately but in hindsight these seem to be the mistakes that we did. Of course during the heat of the moment, which in a startup is every single day, these didnt stand out. Hindsight is always nice and can prick your heart to a guilt trip like nothing else. Loads of people thing that company isnt in existence anymore and its actually on its way to a slow death.
I took a break and joined up with another software firm just to get some financial stability which I don't think was necessary, but just to keep the folks at home happy, bit the bullet and accepted. Every single day, I wanted to do my own thing but just kept at the job. As is the norm for me, I couldnt do a mediocre job. I had to drive myself to succeed, kept banging on the doors, moved ahead and within a short period got promoted to senior management in the company. Still it wasnt enough for me. I had to achieve more. Egos clashed. I was burning out more than I could try to recuperate from. I left the job.
Now I am once again starting off a new firm. With new lessons learnt. With new mistakes to make. Its about a month now and I am typing this out with extremely restrained financial flow. The easy way would be to get a job, get the financial stability. But the matter of the fact is that I am addicted. Addicted to success. I have to succeed. I have to prove to the world that I am something. I have proven it in my professional career. I need to prove it to the world in my entrepreneurial path. The drive is there. The passion is there. The concepts are there. The energy is there. But I am not sure that this one will become a success. There would be mistakes done. Timelines missed. Projects mishandled. Clients escalations. But the only thought that drives me on is that I know that I will learn from these mistakes also and move on. To quote something that I absolutely love and possibly the only thing that I love about that movie. "Its not about how hard you get hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving."
I hope I can move fast enough this time around. Success to me is not measured by the money that I make. It seems easy enough. Get a job. Be myself. The crazy psychotic, sleep deprived, success craving maniac and I will make it big in the career. But my dream would then remain just that. A dream. To achieve my dream I would need to do it for myself. Build something for myself. And hence this.
Why be an entrepreneur? you ask... Why not is my reply.
I never had it easy in life. No.No.No. I wouldn't say that everything went against me and I was your quintessential down-on-luck guy. For the average and even the above average human being out there, my life is rosy and comfortable enough. But the problem was the one curve-ball that was thrown at me in terms of a physical affliction that I have been living with for about 15 years now. This made me hungry. Greedy. Impatient for success. I wanted to get big and get big as fast as possible.
In my early teens, I lived under the presumption that I deserved that and it should be something that I inherit. When I started college, I realized I needed to put in some effort to get there but never really capitalized on my degree to get there. Come on, an Arts degree in English literature isn't going to get you millions any day soon. When I started to work, I realized that this was going to be too slow to get there and I couldn't stand idiocy and mediocrity which was possibly the main characteristics anyone in the corporate management level possessed and nurtured. That's when I started out for the first time. It flopped. It was a small time software start-up. It folded very quickly and I moved on to my next venture and my next and then my next and the next one too.
I have been involved with about 5 start-ups in my life and although a few of them made me enough money to splurge on luxuries at that point of time, they never amounted to anything earth-shaking. My last one was a game development company that was about started about 3 years back. A great team, a few good projects, amazing environ to work at. It had everything going for it and then it quickly turned into the usual story. The company still exists and there is still a couple of projects running in the same but it is not poised to achieve the lofty goals that was set when we started out. Mismanagement, lack of focus, unnecessary expenditure. These are the mistakes that was committed. Not deliberately but in hindsight these seem to be the mistakes that we did. Of course during the heat of the moment, which in a startup is every single day, these didnt stand out. Hindsight is always nice and can prick your heart to a guilt trip like nothing else. Loads of people thing that company isnt in existence anymore and its actually on its way to a slow death.
I took a break and joined up with another software firm just to get some financial stability which I don't think was necessary, but just to keep the folks at home happy, bit the bullet and accepted. Every single day, I wanted to do my own thing but just kept at the job. As is the norm for me, I couldnt do a mediocre job. I had to drive myself to succeed, kept banging on the doors, moved ahead and within a short period got promoted to senior management in the company. Still it wasnt enough for me. I had to achieve more. Egos clashed. I was burning out more than I could try to recuperate from. I left the job.
Now I am once again starting off a new firm. With new lessons learnt. With new mistakes to make. Its about a month now and I am typing this out with extremely restrained financial flow. The easy way would be to get a job, get the financial stability. But the matter of the fact is that I am addicted. Addicted to success. I have to succeed. I have to prove to the world that I am something. I have proven it in my professional career. I need to prove it to the world in my entrepreneurial path. The drive is there. The passion is there. The concepts are there. The energy is there. But I am not sure that this one will become a success. There would be mistakes done. Timelines missed. Projects mishandled. Clients escalations. But the only thought that drives me on is that I know that I will learn from these mistakes also and move on. To quote something that I absolutely love and possibly the only thing that I love about that movie. "Its not about how hard you get hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving."
I hope I can move fast enough this time around. Success to me is not measured by the money that I make. It seems easy enough. Get a job. Be myself. The crazy psychotic, sleep deprived, success craving maniac and I will make it big in the career. But my dream would then remain just that. A dream. To achieve my dream I would need to do it for myself. Build something for myself. And hence this.
Why be an entrepreneur? you ask... Why not is my reply.
All the best! Waiting to see your dreams and reality grow multifolds...
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