Why am I actually doing this?
Why chasing my entrepreneurial dream is so important to me and why I will never stop doing so
Saturday, April 19th 2014 in Berlin, Germany. It is one of the first sunny days sporting 22°C and a sunny blue sky. I am sitting in an armchair in a beautiful café, the sliding doors in front of me are wide open letting in a slight breeze every now and then. The street’s way too familiar noise is only interrupted by groups of people walking past.
I feel incredibly happy, yet I wonder why that is.
The truth I experience almost every day
Being an entrepreneur is quite loaded with weird expectations and sometimes false assumptions as to what drives us. I see that not only in others but sometimes even in myself. Given my below-market salary, the company’s highly uncertain future and the undeniable high work load, it happens quite often that I’m surprised as to why I’m going to work everyday. Even more, I can’t believe how I got to where I’m today, why I actually got here and why I even enjoy being here.
For those who don’t know me, I grew up in a small city called Herdecke in the beautiful Ruhrgebiet. I spent most my time tinkering around with computers and finally got a bachelor degree in business economics. In 2011 I moved to Berlin, co-founded an online marketing company and since 2013 I get my hands dirty in banking at our FinTech Startup Avuba. Every day I dream of a world where using and understanding money is as much fun as posting a photo to Instagram.
People think I’m nuts
It’s unbelievable hard to tell people at parties what I’m doing. To the point that the question “So, and what do you do?” scares me a little. Once I tell them what I spend most of my time with, they either look totally shocked (“So, you actually started the company yourself?”), they think I’m outright nuts and are unsure as to how serious they should take me (“You’re trying to build a bank?”) or they think I’m one of those startup people that dream their dream without realizing that reality has long decided to follow a different truth. I find it extremely difficult to say what I’m doing for real because at times it’s so far off from what people are used to that I have almost no reasonable chance of getting the reality across. And to be honest, since we just got started, it will only get worse.
My peers earn twice as much as me
Then, I’ve to live on roughly half the salary of all my peers in big shot consultancy jobs. They fly around the world, get food and drinks for free and are paid sh*t loads of money. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not worried about not getting salary at all. I’m in the really lucky position of having more potential job offers than I would ever need. That gives me a lot of security. I’m aware that this on its own is already very privileged. But still, it is hard at times when I think of my aforementioned friends (you shouldn’t compare yourself to others, but honestly, who doesn’t?). Especially in the following context:
My job follows me home
I work my ass off, constantly think about work, even have to read books and make some considerable effort to correctly balance work and private life. Everyday I deal with things I have absolutely no clue of. I have never launched a consumer product or raised funding from investors. There is no one that tells me if I’m doing the right things and unless I ask, there is no one who takes me aside and gives me important advice (not completely true, there are quite some people that are very supportive and whom I am truly thankful. Yet, I have to organize advice myself). I never really switch off from work. It literally takes the whole weekend, two full days, to come down from the week. Then the weekend is over and the week starts again. It’s really a lot of stress.
The uncertainty just comes on top
Adding to that stress is the tremendous uncertainty that totally wears you down. I have no clue as to what we are doing at Avuba eventually leads to unthinkable success or straight to failure. In the end, both is my responsibility. Here, it doesn’t help that statistics say that nine out of ten startups fail.
While working my ass off, getting paid below market, me totally screwing up is nine times more likely than succeeding.
Welcome to the world of entrepreneurship! It’s just the same like in rock bands and drug cartels. An awful lot of young, naive people dream to be like a few rockstars they admire. Even though the odds are everything but for them, they don’t give up on that dream. While 1% get to that dream, the remaining 99% keep dreaming.
Why I keep going while my friends quit their high-payed consulting jobs
So why haven’t I quit yet? Why am I still going? What drives me (and most likely other fellow entrepreneurs?)
It is by far the most challenging job I could ever imagine doing. And I desperately need challenges. Without challenges, I feel bored pretty quickly. I want to know where my limits are. If others can build large companies and change the way we live our life, why shouldn’t I be able to do so, too?
It is about personal growth. I didn’t do my masters, because it wasn’t the fastest way to grow. Instead I jumped right into building a company. I grow so much faster when I work on things that are way too difficult to possibly get them right on the first try.
Personal growth is the key to endless opportunities in the future.
I just can’t stop pursuing my dream of true innovation around banking. If I stopped and did something else, I would always ask myself, what if I hadn’t stopped? Would I have succeeded? I would cry of having seen this big opportunity and not having done everything I could to exploit it. I would have missed two things that are really important to me: The opportunity to find my limits and the opportunity to fix something that I desperately want to see fixed.
I am just not ok with the status quo. There are endless opportunities where we can use technology to improve how we use and understand money. No no one seems to do that! I feel the strong need to do it myself. How would there be advances if no one would ever work on the things they think should be fixed? I feel a responsibility that if I can improve something, I am obliged to do so. It’s about purpose in life.
It is rewarding to see the impact. I am a strong believer in doing what feels good everyday — especially at work. In my opinion, too few people actually understand what they want to do in life. By building a company, I can create an environment that allows everyone to not only find but also act according to their own mission in life. Here is where I can support people living an happy and meaningful life. Suddenly, I even have the reach to inspire people outside of our company to do the same. It might sound weird, but I get a lot of energy from seeing and making people understanding themselves and their needs better. I experience first hand how powerful it is to really know and believe in one’s purpose and goals. Thus being able to see that people do things that give them meaning, purpose and happiness in life is truly gratifying.
Low salary and high uncertainty are not permanent. As we grow, the company gets more stable and financially independent. This allows me to actually “buy” freedom and easier living. It sounds decadent but it makes total sense to pay for things like laundry, cleaning and so on. Not having to deal with these things, frees up a lot of mental resources that I can use to tackle even bigger challenges and increase my impact dramatically.
So, why am I doing this?
My driving force is my desire to have a positive impact on the world and us in general. It gives my life meaning and purpose. By working on the toughest of all challenges and tackling problems beyond my abilities while maintaing low salary (temporarily), high workload and high uncertainty I maximize my impact.
My job is true, plain, outright fun!
Thank you for reading this. It really means a lot to me. Now, go out and enjoy your day today — you deserve it! ☺
