10 years of entrepreneurship | Hacker News Reader

10 years of entrepreneurship

startuplessonslearned.blogspot.com

105 pointsepi0Bauqu9 comments

I found the last paragraph to be especially thought-provoking.

He talks about the trap of talking about the work you plan to do at the expense of actually doing it, which is something I find is easy to fall into.

Unfortunately, it is much more tempting and easier looking to jump on a trend in the hopes of becoming rich and famous than to put your head down and execute non-stop for years, especially without any hope in sight.

PS. How do you get to be on these BusinessWeek and Inc. Awesome Person of the Year lists anyway? Do you go hound them or is it just a side-effect of all the publicity your startup is getting?

Good advice. It's easy to get caught up in a comparison with the achievements of others, and to say, "why can't I be like them, why couldn't I have seen that opportunity?" In doing so you make the whole thing competitive - in your mind. The truth is that you aren't them and you probably weren't motivated to try what they did at the time they did it. So why regret it now?

Agree. But let me just add that even if you bothered to try what they did, they could still fail and you could still succeed. Not because of why, but because you were less lucky than them.

Heh, it's also 10 years since I first got into entrepreneurship and realised that running a company was a) fun and b) a decent way to spend one's life. The journey since then has detoured through university, but I was always freelancing on the side. Now I'm running a company "for real" and loving it.

I would love to hear further detail about the balance between freelancing, college, and eventually running my own "real" company. That seems to be the path I'm headed towards.

It's just been a case of prioritising, really. Running several websites from student societies' to independent stuff (looking back, why on earth didn't I monetise any of it?) meant people knew I did websites, which led to being paid for doing one-off stuff. I then spent summers and holidays doing more complex jobs, including rentacoder type work. Worked for local startups and big corporations in summer vacations (sometimes freelancing in my spare time). Broke free of academia, did a bit more freelancing, then realised I had the freedom at last (no academic terms round the corner) to start up rather than do odd jobs for the rest of my life. You'll know when the time is right for that. Good luck! :)

The advice I got from the article: making something valuable to your customers instead of doing something hot.

I agree. Excellent final paragraph.

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