Each time I read about entrepreneurship, I wonder if perhaps the idea may be oversold. The road to entrepreneurship is a hard one. It is similar to the stories of people winning a lottery. We are only aware of the entrepreneurs who have succeeded in life and made it big. However, the harsh reality is that the number of such entrepreneurs is small. Most entrepreneurship and startups fail! This is the reality – so let’s not sell a lie but instead focus on some of the realities of challenges in entrepreneurship.
I will take motivation from the quote
No more romanticizing about how cool it is to be an entrepreneur. It’s a struggle to save your company’s life – and your own skin – every day of the week
— Spencer Fry, co-founder of CarbonMade
No more romanticizing about how cool is it to be an entrepreneur
Entrepreneurship is hard work – at least for the first few years, you will spend more time thinking about finding ways to make money. Even if your idea is great, there are challenges such as – developing the idea, raising funds, sales, legal and administrative operations etc. These are only the highlights of the number of things you will need to do as a founder. I agree however that it can be amazing fun working on your own idea. But I would strongly recommend creating a buffer or safety net for yourself before you dive deep into entrepreneurship. I have made that mistake and deeply regret not being careful enough.
It is a struggle to save your company’s life
The initial years of a startup are about keeping it alive. The only way to keep it alive is to have sufficient funds coming in. In the early days, this can mean that your full time job is about fundraising and creating business plans. This will involve creating business plans, developing pitches and networking to meet potential investors. In short, you are selling an idea and a vision for your company. Apart from this, you will still have to come back and work on your idea to show progress. The investors will want to see progress to test how deeply committed you are to your idea and what you’re doing to make it work.
The first few years are about survival and what you do to survive can be a creative game. There are some small ways to create a startup with no money. But most of the startups demand too much hard work just to stay alive and survive.
It is less about the idea and more about the process and a business
People have a misconception and think that entrepreneurship is all about the idea. It is not – ideas are easy, but implementation is very hard. And even when you implement, selling it is hard. Ultimately the market is a very tough place. Surviving is one of the biggest skills you can learn as an entrepreneur. Even the best ideas will have to change, this is not in the least bit romantic. All I want to say in this article is that you must focus on how to survive and continuously find motivation to keep going. This world will break you if you are not careful. And it sounds cool for the first few months, but after that reality kicks in. You can’t start off something with just romanticism without a good safety net for yourself.
“No more romanticizing about how cool it is to be an entrepreneur. It’s a struggle to save your company’s life – and your own skin – every day of the week.”
— Spencer Fry, co-founder of CarbonMade
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Not my cup of tea at all.But it was an interesting read.It must be very hard to keep on your toes-all the time.
Thanks mate, it sure was an exciting journey. I can still recall the last minute preps which would go on forever , equally fun though to make an idea flourish.
I think one of the starling realisation was that each time the business kept taking a different shape and I remember realising – geez id not planned for that. But the beauty was to get things done and make things work which was a fascinating challenge..
Great to have your thoughts indu 😊