The entrepreneurial path to career bliss
10 years of lessons in 5 minutes
Today I’m going to give you the 5 keys to getting on the win-win, no regrets startup path to career bliss.
In 10 seconds:
- You need the ability to thrive poor, not money, to launch a successful business
- The startup experience is a better MBA than Harvard Business School’s
- Life is short, and imploding founding teams need not destroy your venture ambitions
- The get sh*t done ability and managing experience you gain as a founder is career gold
- Your hard won lessons unlock new venture impact through coaching and investing
In 5 minutes:
In 2013 I launched my first startup having just finished a scientific PhD, having never worked in industry, and building a product with technologies I had no experience with.
It was floundering at its finest. And yet, despite losing my cofounders, failing to gain product-market fit, and being underpaid for 10 years, I found myself leading teams through an acquisition, becoming an LP and VC investor, coaching entrepreneurs in world class entrepreneurship at MIT, and ultimately arriving at career nirvana.
Here are my lessons learned.
Lesson 1: You need the ability to thrive poor, not money, to launch a successful business.
It’s a myth that you need a lot of money to start a business. I found a way to live off of $25k-$35k a year as I iteratively built the first business up. You have to be creative about your happiness, practical, and never forget your Why - about the chance you're giving yourself.
The other part of this reality is that funding is hard to get, even harder in this economic climate. You need to be able to live off of little while you learn the ropes of your business, create value, and find minimum viable customer demand.
Doing this will keep you away from needless funding pain, and unlocks time to work on the business you'd otherwise waste.
Lesson 2: The startup experience is a better MBA than Harvard Business School’s.
Think you need a “business person” to start? Being an entrepreneur is its own MBA. You don’t need to be trained to be a startup CEO. I was a PhD in Health sciences.
My first business developed early mobile health technology for chronic and acute care. I learned how to bootstrap a product, hire (and fire) engineering teams, recruit a CTO, and win enterprise customers. Priceless.
Lesson 3: Life is short, and imploding founding teams need not destroy your venture ambitions.
Bad founding teams are a top reason for startup failure, but can be YOUR opportunity.
Two years in, it became obvious that my first company did not have the right founding team. We looked amazing on paper: a Harvard Medical School MD, MIT Computer Science PhD, and MIT Behavioral Science PhD to build a clinical behavior change solution.
BUT we lacked key connections, resources, and industry experience to gain significant traction. Most importantly, we did not all have personal conviction in the venture.
From this dark time I had the opportunity to take the reins as CEO, rebuild the team, win contracts, and solidify my professional identity as an entrepreneurial professional.
Lesson 4: The get sh*t done ability and managing experience you gain as a founder is career gold.
My first venture never achieved strong product-market fit characterized by repeatable market pull from customers (as opposed to high friction sales pushes by our team).
Yet the deep domain experience and versatility I gained catapulted me into my next startup, cofounded with a much stronger team that made use of my product and hard won knowledge to launch.
We were ultimately acquired 3 years later. This mixture of highly practical + leadership experience cannot be replaced by any amount of “normal” jobs and is an irreplaceable career cornerstone for any future endeavors.
Lesson 5: Your hard won lessons unlock new venture impact through coaching and investing.
Once you gain entrepreneurial experience, you can find fulfillment adjacent to building. You don’t have to keep building businesses (i.e. you can escape the intense, brutal path of founding startups!).
Coaching and advising become a natural way to both process your past into highly refined lessons, as well as connect with the next wave of entrepreneurs.
Investing may also become possible. I was surprised at how passionate I became about progressive venture capital and more equitable funding. Working with Third Culture Capital allowed me to build towards a collective entrepreneurial future I believe in as well as learn the craft of supporting the ventures with the greatest opportunities to make a difference.
I firmly believe that entrepreneurship is one of the most fulfilling crafts that can transform your career. That’s why I’m on a mission to lead, coach, invest in and collaborate with the best entrepreneurial spirits out there.
And I believe that in applying these lessons, you too can find career bliss through entrepreneurship.
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