| Sometimes it's easy to overlook the benefits of simply working in a great organization for a while rather than pursuing your 'dream' such as teaching surfing or doing your startup full time. The author makes a great point that being a mechanic is not about loving cars. It's about unscrewing stubborn stripped bolts while lying on your back. Similarly, teaching surfing is not the same as having a fun surf session with your mates! As a former snowboarding instuctor (my 'dream' job at the time when I was 19 ((now 30)) I can personally attest to the 'dream' being different from the reality. If you can find creative ways to gain rare, scarce knowledge and generate a large network of contacts while benefiting from the resources available through employment at a large company (administrative and operational support) then you'll have a larger base of potential customers from which to draw on when you start your startup. For instance, if you build a strong network of 500 contacts, and each of those people has 3 people in their network who might want what your startup sells, you suddenly have 1,500 people who you can easily reach out to. In this case, your 'day job' that initially seemed so terrible is actually an excellent platform from which to 'build' your startup. Of course, some of you will want to go full time into your startup, and all the power to you if that's what you choose. Coming off a recent startup failure I need money, and the prospect of having some support and access to resources is sounding pretty good right now. It's always possible to build the startup at night and on weekends if it's meant to be, and that's my plan going forward. Apologies for the verboseness - I didn't have time to trim this down. |