Ever heard of Mint.com? Well they won last year’s Techcrunch40 conference. Still not ringing a bell? Well mint.com provides free personal finance software. Just some of the services provided by mint include: notifications of unusual spending/charges, works to find you lower interest credit cards, find higher interest rates for your savings accounts (shamelessly taken from Mint.com’s homepage).
Mint.com’s founder, Aaron Patzer (pictured above in the video thumbnail), was recently interviewed. After finding that getting a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering was “thoroughly impractical” and opting to simply getting his MSEE from
- "I was 25 at the time, and basically oscillated day to day between thinking "This is the greatest idea ever!" and "This will never work. Who am I to take on Intuit and Microsoft? If this was a good idea, someone would have done it before." It’s very emotional, and I don’t think people ever tell you about that. You see your net worth quickly draining, you have no idea what’s going to happen next, and you’re sitting alone in a room with no help, no resources, just your brain and sheer will-power. When ever I got down, I would listen to "That’s Life" by Frank Sinatra, or think about a Shakespeare quote I liked as a kid: "Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we might oft win, by fearing to attempt." "
Believe me when I say those words are HELLA true! The Shakespeare quote is so powerful it bears repeating: “Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we might oft win, by fearing to attempt!” Entrepreneurship is very, very, very emotional. The emotional rollercoaster is such a substantial part of entrepreneurship. I haven't seen any entrepreneurship textbooks address this extremely important issue. If you’re doing anything you’re actually passionate about, this is a necessary requirement. You have really high highs, and really low lows.
This is what Marc Andreessen had to say:
- “First, and most importantly, realize that a startup puts you on an emotional rollercoaster unlike anything you have ever experienced.You will flip rapidly from a day in which you are euphorically convinced you are going to own the world, to a day in which doom seems only weeks away and you feel completely ruined, and back again. Over and over and over. And I'm talking about what happens to stable entrepreneurs.”
Whenever thoughts like these pop into our minds, just remember: “Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we might oft win, by fearing to attempt!!”
[Update: in case you've never heard the Sinatra song, "That's Life," a sample of it is embedded below]
14 comments:
Great post man.
I enjoyed it...
Thanks
Dom
Do people still say Hella? Didn't that go out with pearl jam?
@anon: cartman said hella in a recent southpark episode – it's back
"Hella" is hella-kewl.
@Gianni: if you clicked on the "interviewed" link, you'd see that I did in fact credit the quote. The link you've given goes to the same exact interview.
Thank You for this article.
I am going to email this to myself and read it over and over.
As a budding entreprener in the field of Web Design, I've been disheartened by my slow start and "declining net worth."
I constantly bombard myself with questions like "Am I'm just not good enough?" "Should I just get a regular job again?" and more...
Again I thank you for this. It was a great pick-me-up for a fellow entrepreneur.
I would greatly enjoy seeing "What they don't tell you about being an entrepreneur" be a consistent part of this or some blog.
Awesome article, even better demo video, your web app is badass. Thanks for the entrepreneural life insight.
I think doubt kills a lot of "would-be" entrepreneurs in part because these guys/gals think it's unique to them when in fact it's perfectly normal.
For instance, Mark Cuban doesn't appear to be the type of guy you'd associate self-doubt with; you'd probably associate a ton of confidence with him. However, as he states in his manifesto, http://www.changethis.com/5.SuccessMotivation, he had "as much doubt as I (he) did confidence." He only hoped that the confidence would win out.
I have to agree with everyone else and say this was a really good post. Very motivational.
Excellent. Very true. How many people have wasted their talent, because they were afraid....
thanks for the nice article :-)
Jeffrey
Oh so true !
Your blog is exactly what I needed today. I have been in excruciating pain -- which you describe in another blog post -- of the entrepreneurial kind. Your entire site makes me remember why I'm doing it in the first place. I love it. Thanks, KC
fist time here, stumbled in, Very nice, thanks for the post. greatt stuff.
Totally true.
More examples and how to think about them, while accepting the emotional aspects:
http://blog.asmartbear.com/blog/underbelly-what-haughty-startup-bloggers-dont-tell-you.html
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