“Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty.” – Jacob Bronowski (20th century British scientist)
I would like to express my current state of mind, which is a result of some major events in my life which have transpired over the course of the last year and a half. The crucial and overarching theme that I’ve come to learn from my experiences thus far can be found in the above quote. The recent events that have transpired dealt an enormous blow to my self-confidence, but at this point I’m coming back around.
When I finished high school, I decided not to go to college right away and instead carve out a niche for myself in the New York tech startup scene. After all, New York as a tech hub is second only to Silicon Valley. I had befriended a well-known entrepreneur and investor toward the end of my high school tenure who believed in me and made introductions which resulted in my first job: an unpaid internship in a venture-backed tech startup in SoHo. This lasted for a couple months, and then I transitioned into a position within the venture firm itself (run by my friend, who became my employer).
He ran a venture capital startup which invested in seed-stage mobile technologies – this positioning meant that I had a first-hand perspective at what forces make startups successes and/or failures. I learned how to talk to investors, witnessed how to build a companies from the ground up, made absurdly high-level connections, and learned countless more lessons. As time progressed, I became unhappy for the wrong reasons. I grew tired of working under someone – I got the entrepreneurial bug. I decided to leave so I could learn how to code and build a startup of my own (which as of today, is dormant).
This was my mistake. It was a premature exit and I have suffered greatly for it. I let my emotions get in the way of reasoning. I couldn’t pull through and got distracted. I remained unemployed for months, and that’s when I decided to apply for school and jump back into a startup. Both of these things happened, and unfortunately things didn’t work out at this third company. As of today, most of my personal network is dried up.
Today I’m more knowledgeable and experienced, and I’m running a startup FULLY ([a second one, not the above mentioned] and although it’s still broken, and still somewhat of a side project as I’m looking for any job to pay the bills). The solution is technical, and every day I spend time learning how to code so I could fix the issues myself. Once this is done, I wholeheartedly believe it’ll take off. When it does, I would like to stop my job search/or leave a job depending on how much cash going to my pocket. By June or so I believe will be the time.
I believe my destiny is my own, and over the long term I could never work under somebody. I’ve never been good with someone else’s rules – I want to work WITH people not FOR people. Real money is made in your own office, not someone else’s.
Thanks for reading, and sorry for the length!
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