I'm the author of this article. Please note that 2020 should be added to the title, as I wrote it late 2020, after I left Uber and my plan back then was to start a startup some months later.

I had recently left Uber, and launched this e-book, and wrote this post with notes on what I thought might be useful skills as I go ahead with that startup.

Note that I did not go ahead with founding a startup, so most of this post should be taken as "skills I thought would have been useful if I launched a venture-funded startup."

I do think you can learn things better if you have some skin in the game. Specifically, learning about entrepreneurship can be easier if you start a small venture, even if on the side.

Also, as PragmaticPulp pointed out, the title is misleading given my advice is based on a book launch, not a startup. I changed the title on the original blog post to "Want to learn about entrepreneurship, as a software engineer? Sell something online."