
10 years of entrepreneurship - epi0Bauqu
http://startuplessonslearned.blogspot.com/2009/07/10-years-of-entrepreneurship.html
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TrevorJ
I found the last paragraph to be especially thought-provoking.

He talks about the trap of talking about the work you plan to do at the
expense of actually doing it, which is something I find is easy to fall into.

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aditya
Unfortunately, it is much more tempting and easier looking to jump on a trend
in the hopes of becoming rich and famous than to put your head down and
execute non-stop for years, especially without any hope in sight.

PS. How do you get to be on these BusinessWeek and Inc. Awesome Person of the
Year lists anyway? Do you go hound them or is it just a side-effect of all the
publicity your startup is getting?

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ecot
Good advice. It's easy to get caught up in a comparison with the achievements
of others, and to say, "why can't I be like them, why couldn't I have seen
that opportunity?" In doing so you make the whole thing competitive - in your
mind. The truth is that you aren't them and you probably weren't motivated to
try what they did at the time they did it. So why regret it now?

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nsoonhui
Agree. But let me just add that even if you bothered to try what they did,
they could still fail and you could still succeed. Not because of why, but
because you were less lucky than them.

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jlees
Heh, it's also 10 years since I first got into entrepreneurship and realised
that running a company was a) fun and b) a decent way to spend one's life. The
journey since then has detoured through university, but I was always
freelancing on the side. Now I'm running a company "for real" and loving it.

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quizbiz
I would love to hear further detail about the balance between freelancing,
college, and eventually running my own "real" company. That seems to be the
path I'm headed towards.

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jlees
It's just been a case of prioritising, really. Running several websites from
student societies' to independent stuff (looking back, why on earth didn't I
monetise any of it?) meant people knew I did websites, which led to being paid
for doing one-off stuff. I then spent summers and holidays doing more complex
jobs, including rentacoder type work. Worked for local startups and big
corporations in summer vacations (sometimes freelancing in my spare time).
Broke free of academia, did a bit more freelancing, then realised I had the
freedom at last (no academic terms round the corner) to start up rather than
do odd jobs for the rest of my life. You'll know when the time is right for
that. Good luck! :)

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udekaf
The advice I got from the article: making something valuable to your customers
instead of doing something hot.

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jeffspost
I agree. Excellent final paragraph.

