My uneasy road to entrepreneurship
This is an introduction from myself to the Medium community. Even though I choose for now to remain unnamed. Let’s face it, deciding to actually write down your thoughts on any topic is not something natural for most, let alone if the content is yourself, your journey, your experience, your successes and failures in an attempt to achieve any goal.
Well, here I am nonetheless about to tell you my story. The story of somebody who just could not work corporate anymore, felt the need to change something and decided to go independent like a musical artist would say.
1. Genesis
Picture an IT consultant for financial services with seven years of experience leaving behind a pretty good job and good income to walk on the risky path of entrepreneurship. Most people would call that craziness, especially those who are really close but have the feeling that everything is going well in your life. They don’t see the need for change, they don’t understand the need for more. More control, more decision, more self-accountability.
I have tried to be an entrepreneur since engineering school. My very first venture was when I talked about building an eBay for Cameroon with my fellow student-engineers. This project is now called BuyleBon. It took several years, a team of 6, then 4, then 6 again, and thousands of hours besides our regular jobs to start it…and it’s just really starting to get off the ground. Entrepreneurship is not easy.
2. Road Blocks
I live in an administration heavy country. I left a city where anything is possible, a city that never sleeps, to go back to a city of lights that is trying to be a city of bright…talent. There are tons of initiatives to accompany the wishes and dreams of aspiring company creators. Yet, the path is still not easy, the journey is quite long.
It starts with self. Making the decision to dedicate yourself to a project, putting your whole energy, all your hours in order for your idea to grow up as quickly as possible into a business. More times than others, it also consits in putting your financial security in jeopardy and fighting off the thought, coming from certain relatives, that you’re delusional. It also and more importantly starts with self-evaluation, knowing your strengths and weaknesses, thoroughly and objectively determining if you’re suited for that life.
Then it has everything to do with the environment, the ecosystem in which you’re trying to add value. I live in a country where the unemployment agency has programs dedicated to those who want to build a company, but yet in my opinion does not actually support their efforts to do so. The balance between communication and real action is tricky. Millions of web pages, thousands of startups or companies, hundreds of government agencies and associations are supposedly dedicated to making it easy. I believe they just add up to the mess. Not because they are not good at what they do. Some of them are actually awesomely efficient, recognized with their high success rates. They are just too much. A wanabee entrepreneur, especially one with no pre-loaded business school network or trust-fund like contact list, simply does not know where to start. What page to read first, what interlocutor to contact. So we jump and gamble.
Your ecosystem must be customized. That’s why it’s imperative to meet people and entertain these new business relationships yourself. Genuinely caring about what others do, brings attention to what you do and can generate the will to help your cause, even join it. It has to be customized to your needs, your business but also to your character. That ecosystem is likely the source of your funding. It’s where you’ll find your associates. It’s how you’ll get a hold of your first partners, clients, freelancers and employees.
90% of the new companies die in their first 5 years. Except for the technical and economic reasons (no market for the product, no business model, no cash, no marketing, wrong time-to-market, wrong technology,…), the biggest sources of these failures are linked to the people involved in the project. Their characters, their communication, the team they build, their talent allocation, the responsibilities that they give one another and their split of the shares of the company.
3. Look ahead
I did face a lot of these issues already. Between the businesses that are still up and those that I had to abandon, I would count four or five ventures that I tried to do while having a full-time job. This is the first time I am actually trying to be a full-time entrepreneur. It’s scary. The roadblocks come in bunches. But the trials and tribulations are inspiring. There is so much to learn.
I read lots of articles, book excerpts and blog posts about self-improvement, about entrepreneurship and about the technologies that I plan on using. I network regularly and keep in touch with people more intelligent, aware and experienced than me. Daily and endless conversations about all sorts of business opportunities happen around me. I even did a bit of MLM, forcing myself into more of a communicator and learning the basics of the art of selling. I am discovering a professional world that is completely different than the corporate environment. It’s exciting and humbling. The challenge is tough because I went from a position in a corporate company where I had a specific skillset to use and specific responsibilities to cover, to a position as an entrepreneur where I basically have to cover all grounds, have the most general knowledge possible and I have to run everything by myself until I find associates. A complete U-turn in my professional career.
I have decided to build a product that solves my own problem. I am working on a way to facilitate the process of turning an idea into a startup. I attend meetups to talk to other entrepreneurs, I use networking apps, I document myself and I am currently working on my MVP (Minimum Viable Product). I should start an incubation program as well and hopefully will find enough cash to actually deploy and correctly market the first version of the product. What’s the product? I’d rather present it to you when it’s ready.
Rookie mistake?
:)
