En Route to Saenthood: #5 Temptations
This series is about what I’m learning, observing and experiencing while building my startup Saent (pronounce “Saint”). The good, the bad and especially the ugly, each time in under 500 words.
Temptations usually arrive in the form of job offers which, these days, tend to arrive via LinkedIn. Here’s one from late October 2014.
Going cold turkey from a decent monthly salary, temptation presents itself in strange ways. Job offers, consultancy gigs and part-time work. For the man without a fixed income, it’s hard to turn these down.
Why should you?
*1. Job offers* Clearly, a job offer will interfere with the building of your startup. There are few business ideas which you can properly pursue in your spare time. For this reason, taking on a job offer usually means the end of your startup adventure.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t make it less tempting: your girlfriend wants an iPhone 6, you have no sight at a holiday and your money will run out within a few months. And how good is your idea anyways? Can it really be the next Facebook?
These are the early moments where courage, perhaps mixed with a healthy dose of craziness, needs to trump logic. Following your gut and choosing the unknown path, as opposed to making a u-turn back onto the safe road called Monthly Salary.
*2. Consultancy gigs and part-time work* These are even trickier. It seems like a fair trade-off: give up, say, 20% of your weekly time, in exchange for some financial security.
The problem here is that reality usually turns out to be different:
- 20% turns into 40%.
- You can’t fit all side-activities into one specific day.
- You are expected to be available by phone and/or email throughout the week.
- Etc.
“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully.” - Steve Jobs
In my experience, being 100% focused on one main endeavour is the way to go. Possible exceptions are side-jobs which:
- Completely align with your startup’s goal (rare).
- Allow you to research something which is critical for your own endeavour.
- Significantly increase your network or reputation within your field.
Still, temptations are hard.
It’s easy to trick yourself into thinking the opportunity at hand meets one or more of the above criteria. In reality, that might not be true. The one who’s easiest to fool is yourself.
In the end, all these temptations are really a test of how much you believe in your idea. In the really early stages, the one-million-dollar-question therefore is:
Are you ready to turn down financial security in the form of a fantastic job offer, to instead pursue that crazy idea, which currently only exists for 99% in your head?
If the answer is yes, you’re on to something, or at least have the confidence required to move on to the next stage.
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