Thanks for sharing your experience. I decided to try to build my newsletter intro side gig this year. The goal is to keep the content free while offering something valuable to the members.
I found the insight that people want the lifestyle of an entrepreneur interesting. Now I'm wondering if this is what I want deep down. 🤔
Hey Alex! Thanks for all your likes and comments. I wanted to say first of all that I really enjoy your content and I love that we engage constantly via posts and notes - both yours and mine. Makes me believe again in social media!
About entrepreneurship, I wish I could give you a good answer, but ofc, you are the only one that can do that for yourself. And it's definitely relatable that you cannot make the decision yet. It's a life-long journey and it's normal to have to do some soul searching to find out.
Still, I can give you some of my perspective. Years ago, I was fascinated with startups and it was my dream to have one. A few years later, this dream started to fade away. The reason was simple. As Paul Graham wrote once, building a startup can just fast-forward your career. You condense years and years of work in a short period of time and you try to achieve what would have taken you a long time in the corporate world in a period of sleepless nights and constant hustle. I thought that didn't suit me so much because I'm generally fine with things taking take. Steady wins the race, so to speak.
Then, this all changed when I had an opportunity to start a company with some people I knew. I was perfectly happy in my regular job, but this "what if" got me. I guess you either have an "itch" for it, or you don't.
What followed, were 2-3 amazing years. It was tough, yes, but very rewarding. And the learnings that I got from it... you cannot teach that with books.
After 2022, when we sold the company, it was time for some soul searching again. I now know that being a founder, is too much stress for me. And it's not what I enjoy a lot. I don't have a huge ego and I am not so money driven to justify that stress. I discovered that the things I enjoy are:
* having a team
* being able to influence the product and company is a BIG way
* building stuff - be it code, a product or a team
* the ownership
* being cross functional
What I don't like is the politics, investments/investors and the hustle culture.
So the next thing I do, is going to be something that brings me this as much as possible. It could be a solopreneurship, it could be a startup, or it could be some amazing, established company. Time will tell what it will be.
My advice to you would be: Find what kind of tasks you enjoy. Then start looking around, open some doors, try different things. Be open to many possibilities. The just give it some time and hope the right opportunity will appear.
And put yourself out there! Which you are already doing in Substack. Keep it up!
Wow, this is fantastic advice, Nikola. Thank you for taking the time to write such a meaningful response.
I like to solve problems through coding, and I enjoy sharing what I know with others. I also like processes and systems. This is something I can incorporate into the newsletter to connect with people who share similar interests.
Reading your comment, it is clear to me that I'm not in this for the entrepreneurship lifestyle. I think it has more to do with leaving a legacy. 😊
This should enable me to adapt, learn how to enjoy the ride, and make failure and learning part of the process.
If you already know what you enjoy, then do more of it. And look around while you do - you might find an opportunity somewhere there.
Life gives you chances in unexpected places. I also thought entrepreneurship wasn't for me. However, once I had the change to join a startup WHILE not having to deal with investors, sales etc, I jumped on it - because I could focus on the tech side AND on building and running a team. This wasn't planned - it just presented itself as a possibility, and I took it.
This sole-searching reminds me of the "The way of the superior man" book. Sounds very misogynist, but it's not - it's a lot about finding yourself and dealing with problems. Check it out if it sounds interesting.
Thanks for sharing your experience. I decided to try to build my newsletter intro side gig this year. The goal is to keep the content free while offering something valuable to the members.
I found the insight that people want the lifestyle of an entrepreneur interesting. Now I'm wondering if this is what I want deep down. 🤔
Hey Alex! Thanks for all your likes and comments. I wanted to say first of all that I really enjoy your content and I love that we engage constantly via posts and notes - both yours and mine. Makes me believe again in social media!
About entrepreneurship, I wish I could give you a good answer, but ofc, you are the only one that can do that for yourself. And it's definitely relatable that you cannot make the decision yet. It's a life-long journey and it's normal to have to do some soul searching to find out.
Still, I can give you some of my perspective. Years ago, I was fascinated with startups and it was my dream to have one. A few years later, this dream started to fade away. The reason was simple. As Paul Graham wrote once, building a startup can just fast-forward your career. You condense years and years of work in a short period of time and you try to achieve what would have taken you a long time in the corporate world in a period of sleepless nights and constant hustle. I thought that didn't suit me so much because I'm generally fine with things taking take. Steady wins the race, so to speak.
Then, this all changed when I had an opportunity to start a company with some people I knew. I was perfectly happy in my regular job, but this "what if" got me. I guess you either have an "itch" for it, or you don't.
What followed, were 2-3 amazing years. It was tough, yes, but very rewarding. And the learnings that I got from it... you cannot teach that with books.
After 2022, when we sold the company, it was time for some soul searching again. I now know that being a founder, is too much stress for me. And it's not what I enjoy a lot. I don't have a huge ego and I am not so money driven to justify that stress. I discovered that the things I enjoy are:
* having a team
* being able to influence the product and company is a BIG way
* building stuff - be it code, a product or a team
* the ownership
* being cross functional
What I don't like is the politics, investments/investors and the hustle culture.
So the next thing I do, is going to be something that brings me this as much as possible. It could be a solopreneurship, it could be a startup, or it could be some amazing, established company. Time will tell what it will be.
My advice to you would be: Find what kind of tasks you enjoy. Then start looking around, open some doors, try different things. Be open to many possibilities. The just give it some time and hope the right opportunity will appear.
And put yourself out there! Which you are already doing in Substack. Keep it up!
Wow, this is fantastic advice, Nikola. Thank you for taking the time to write such a meaningful response.
I like to solve problems through coding, and I enjoy sharing what I know with others. I also like processes and systems. This is something I can incorporate into the newsletter to connect with people who share similar interests.
Reading your comment, it is clear to me that I'm not in this for the entrepreneurship lifestyle. I think it has more to do with leaving a legacy. 😊
This should enable me to adapt, learn how to enjoy the ride, and make failure and learning part of the process.
If you already know what you enjoy, then do more of it. And look around while you do - you might find an opportunity somewhere there.
Life gives you chances in unexpected places. I also thought entrepreneurship wasn't for me. However, once I had the change to join a startup WHILE not having to deal with investors, sales etc, I jumped on it - because I could focus on the tech side AND on building and running a team. This wasn't planned - it just presented itself as a possibility, and I took it.
This sole-searching reminds me of the "The way of the superior man" book. Sounds very misogynist, but it's not - it's a lot about finding yourself and dealing with problems. Check it out if it sounds interesting.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/79424.The_Way_of_the_Superior_Man