Most sane thing ever said about the iPad.
703 karma · joined March 11, 2008
given what you tell us about yourself, you could off course just go ahead and totally change your life from one day to the other and "create something new that will be challenging and interesting [...]", that you can do from home.
Sometimes though, if you don't know what "that thing" is that you wanna do, it helps to take a step back and look at the situation.
If i were in your position, i would start a list with all the things that make me unhappy. Be honest, take your time and try to dig deep. The goal here is to fully understand why you are unhappy. It is a lot easier to understand what you want to do next, once you figured out what is wrong right now. Let me give you an example. If you don't feel respected in your job, it might help to start writing a blog or start another side project that gives you the respect and the appreciation that is difficult to get in your current job.
Once you've analysed why you're unhappy you already made a huge step forward. You're now in the know and a second step from here could be to create something like a change log. What i mean is, that you could try to find a solution for the biggest things that make you unhappy. You could have a chat with your boss, check your finances to see if you could work less, have a couple of interviews to validate your options etc. Work on the change log and try to find solutions for more and more things that make you unhappy. Give yourself a realistic timeline, work against it and measure the progress. [It helps a lot if you have someone on your side to give you feedback btw].
Sometimes it also helps to make a list of all your achievements. Write down every single thing you every did. I'm pretty sure it will be an impressive list and you can use it to determine what you really want to do next.
Finally, go ahead and tell yourself that you love the long hours at work, and the commute, and your difficult boss, and the fact that you still try to figure out what to do with your life, and that you still pay off your mortgage, because this is your life, it is all there is! :)
Having other startups validating your idea is a great way to actually proof your team, competence and idea. We're based in London and despite the fact that we were lucky enough to know a couple of YC startups, that gave us great feedback on our application, we're thrilled to know that our idea, our team and our startup will be reviewed by a couple of other great YC startups.
Mark Zuckerberg, probably put it best during his Startup School talk. He told the audience that instead of going for the universities that really wanted to use Facebook, they rolled out Facebook to the universities that seemed the least interested in it. I think this is a brilliant move to test your product. The same applies here.
Good luck to everyone!