Its been a crazy couple of weeks travelling around the world #MediciMasters , especially with the just ended tour of Latin America, and just got home in readiness to head out to Asia in a few days, only to find there’s an interesting blog post kicking around the internets this week titled “why i quit my job to start a tech company”. It follows the path to start-up success taken by a former wall streeter who, at age 25, decided to change his career after seeing the power mark zuckerberg wielded in a room full of media executives.
The blog post has been particularly popular with stanford and harvard MBAs, many of whom hope to follow a similar path. i agree that we need more capable people actually building companies that solve problems as you might have noticed in my earlier postings, but i’m troubled by what appears to be an obvious omission from the story.
Although i appreciate the post’s sentiment, let’s not overlook how much easier it is to embrace this type of advice (“be bold! take risks! follow your passions!”) when you have savings from your private equity job to fall back on. The luxury of start-up capital is a very real factor in one’s ability to pursue a dream.
There’s a saying that it’s easy to hit a home run when you’re born on third base. Similarly, many of the struggles that crush budding entrepreneurs (like overwhelming debt and limited access to talent and partnerships) are greatly ameliorated by access to capital.
I don’t mean to diminish the writer’s accomplishments, well especially since he happens to be an aquiantance— i admire his drive and tenacity, and it sounds like he created a lot of his success through hard work like most of entrepreneurs do. but in the viral frenzy to share this feel-good story, i don’t want the nuances of reality to get lost: starting a company is hard work, but it’s even harder if you truly start from nothing.
