Dear Bureaucrat,
I feel like I’m missing out. People are starting companies and nonprofits, and I’m just holding down a job. If I stick with it, I’ll get promoted eventually, but I’ll still be a cog in a dreary machine. I want to be an entrepreneur and build something I’m proud of, but I’m afraid to give up my steady paycheck. Should I take the leap, quit my job, and work full time on finding a dream to make real? Or should I wait until I develop a can’t-fail idea and then take the plunge?
Signed,
Mark “Hoodie” Z.
Dear Hoodie,
You’ve been influenced by two kinds of romanticized startup stories. The first is total commitment; working sixteen-hour days so you can code all night and pitch all day, living in a group house and subsisting on instant ramen, until you attract venture capital and then make it big. If it doesn’t work out, then you start picking up the pieces of your life. The second story is getting a brilliant idea and developing a business plan that maps step by step how to implement it, so the risk of failure isn’t even part of the story.
Back when Google and Amazon were startups, Professor Saras Sarasvathy researched what successful startup entrepreneurs actually do, and it usually didn’t match those romanticized stories. Sarasvathy found that the entrepreneur usually…Read the rest in Federal Times https://www.federaltimes.com/your-career/the-bureaucrat/2019/05/02/dear-bureaucrat-should-i-quit-my-job-to-launch-a-startup/
