Having taken risks right at the start of my career, I have been asked by many juniors about the risks of moving in a startup or maybe starting up one on their own.
Well as per my experience, the sheer joy and excitement of being a major contribuor to a product delivered successfully to the market is what MUCH MUCH more than being a mere cog in the wheel. The deadlines, the customer interactions, the sole responsibility on your "tender" shoulders - its just so driving!
You tend to understand the market, the money flow and control - and LOTS more.
I found this "Student's Guide to startups" - which might be of "some" help.
It talks about both the Pluses and the Minuses.
This essay is derived from a talk at MIT.
Till recently graduating seniors had two choices: get a job or go to grad school। I think there will increasingly be a third option: to start your own startup. But how common will that be?I'm sure the default will always be to get a job, but starting a startup could well become as popular as grad school. In the late 90s my professor friends used to complain that they couldn't get grad students, because all the undergrads were going to work for startups. I wouldn't be surprised if that situation returns, but with one difference: this time they'll be starting their own instead of going to work for other people's.The most ambitious students will at this point be asking: Why wait till you graduate? Why not start a startup while you're in college? In fact, why go to college at all? Why not start a startup instead?
Plus
If you start a startup soon after college, you'll be a young founder by present standards, so you should know what the relative advantages of young founders are. They're not what you might think. As a young founder your strengths are: stamina, poverty, rootlessness, colleagues, and ignorance.
Most startups end up doing something different than they planned. The way the successful ones find something that works is by trying things that don't. So the worst thing you can do in a startup is to have a rigid, pre-ordained plan and then start spending a lot of money to implement it. Better to operate cheaply and give your ideas time to evolve.
It would be helpful just to realize what an advantage you have as students. Some of your classmates are probably going to be successful startup founders; at a great technical university, that is a near certainty. So which ones? If I were you I'd look for the people who are not just smart, but incurable builders. Look for the people who keep starting projects, and finish at least some of them. That's what we look for. Above all else, above academic credentials and even the idea you apply with, we look for people who build things.The other place co-founders meet is at work. Fewer do than at school, but there are things you can do to improve the odds. The most important, obviously, is to work somewhere that has a lot of smart, young people. Another is to work for a company located in a startup hub. It will be easier to talk a co-worker into quitting with you in a place where startups are happening all around you.
Minus
So much for the advantages of young founders. What about the disadvantages? I'm going to start with what goes wrong and try to trace it back to the root causes.
It's not just that in a startup you work on the idea as well as implementation. The very implementation is different. Its main purpose is to refine the idea.
Someone who gets this will work much harder at making a startup succeed—with the proverbial energy of a drowning man, in fact. But understanding the relationship between money and work also changes the way you work.
Source
Well as per my experience, the sheer joy and excitement of being a major contribuor to a product delivered successfully to the market is what MUCH MUCH more than being a mere cog in the wheel. The deadlines, the customer interactions, the sole responsibility on your "tender" shoulders - its just so driving!
You tend to understand the market, the money flow and control - and LOTS more.
I found this "Student's Guide to startups" - which might be of "some" help.
It talks about both the Pluses and the Minuses.
This essay is derived from a talk at MIT.
Till recently graduating seniors had two choices: get a job or go to grad school। I think there will increasingly be a third option: to start your own startup. But how common will that be?I'm sure the default will always be to get a job, but starting a startup could well become as popular as grad school. In the late 90s my professor friends used to complain that they couldn't get grad students, because all the undergrads were going to work for startups. I wouldn't be surprised if that situation returns, but with one difference: this time they'll be starting their own instead of going to work for other people's.The most ambitious students will at this point be asking: Why wait till you graduate? Why not start a startup while you're in college? In fact, why go to college at all? Why not start a startup instead?
Plus
If you start a startup soon after college, you'll be a young founder by present standards, so you should know what the relative advantages of young founders are. They're not what you might think. As a young founder your strengths are: stamina, poverty, rootlessness, colleagues, and ignorance.
Most startups end up doing something different than they planned. The way the successful ones find something that works is by trying things that don't. So the worst thing you can do in a startup is to have a rigid, pre-ordained plan and then start spending a lot of money to implement it. Better to operate cheaply and give your ideas time to evolve.
It would be helpful just to realize what an advantage you have as students. Some of your classmates are probably going to be successful startup founders; at a great technical university, that is a near certainty. So which ones? If I were you I'd look for the people who are not just smart, but incurable builders. Look for the people who keep starting projects, and finish at least some of them. That's what we look for. Above all else, above academic credentials and even the idea you apply with, we look for people who build things.The other place co-founders meet is at work. Fewer do than at school, but there are things you can do to improve the odds. The most important, obviously, is to work somewhere that has a lot of smart, young people. Another is to work for a company located in a startup hub. It will be easier to talk a co-worker into quitting with you in a place where startups are happening all around you.
Minus
So much for the advantages of young founders. What about the disadvantages? I'm going to start with what goes wrong and try to trace it back to the root causes.
It's not just that in a startup you work on the idea as well as implementation. The very implementation is different. Its main purpose is to refine the idea.
Someone who gets this will work much harder at making a startup succeed—with the proverbial energy of a drowning man, in fact. But understanding the relationship between money and work also changes the way you work.
Source