Ever since I graduated from Engineering, I had this notion that one day I will have a startup of my own. It stems from my belief that building a startup means solving a tangible problem that people face today and solving it at scale. For this very reason, I started working at startups from day1 of my graduation.
I have slowly progressed from being an early engineer to a team lead to managing a team of 10 people. I also became part of the management team at my startup, helping implementing processes and policies, and also define the business sometimes. At the same time, I often regret that the startup I am working for, is not the one that I founded. I obviously helped create and adopt policies in this startup, but still I am not the CEO nor the founder of it.
What stops me is that I learnt that building a startup is very tough and more often than not, it is filled with constant struggle and stress. Paul Graham, cofounder of YC, in his talk, tells people not do a startup for the sake of doing one. He gives an advice that people should just keep building and doing things that are interesting, for the sake of a hobby or solving a problem. And maybe, they will find something that they have to expose it to the world. In other words,
Don’t build a startup because you want to, but build it because you have to!
That brings me to the point of this blog. Should I do a startup, because I want to? Or should I continue doing my best work at the startup I work for?
Or just throw away caution to the wind, and dive in?
