Do not waste your life on bullsh*t startups

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, PLEASE DO NOT WASTE YOUR LIFE ON MEANINGLESS STARTUPS!!

Over the past couple of months, I was lucky enough to get the chance to screen 100s of startups that are trying to raise funds from VCs and despite having the privilege of meeting some of the brightest minds and getting to see how they plan to change the world as we know it, I simply couldn’t get over the fact that for every successful founder there are 10 equally bright people, who are working on terribly useless startup ideas, that it would make absolutely no difference in the world if their startups just ceased to exist!

The amount of time and talent that is being wasted in such endeavors is absolutely heart-breaking! Just imagine the world we could be living in right now if young talented people actually channeled their youth, energy, and creativity into solving real-world problems instead of creating the 26th app to predict the stock market, or the 45th polygon-shaped payment app?!

I fully understand why people decide to go after what they think are low-hanging fruits and assume that they will be able to sell it if they call it “revolutionary” enough times. We are simply scared! We have every right to be!

We unlucky millennials were born in very strange times. We have already gone through a couple of once-in-a-lifetime economic crises, seen a global pandemic, and our future is as uncertain as it gets.

The dream of starting your own company, having a billion-dollar valuation, and being the next Meme-lord billionaire is simply too hard to resist in this situation. But, unfortunately, this is not how the world works.

In reality, your startup is most probably going to fail; 9 out of 10 do. One of the most eye-opening experiences for me was when I decided to go through the archived startups that have been rejected by my VC over the past couple of years to see where they are now. It was a graveyard of websites not found and shattered dreams.

Also regarding the financial upside, you are actually in a much better position by joining a growing startup in its early phases and getting some stock options than building your own. This is literally the first lesson they teach you in Standford’s How to start a startup course. The 100th employee of Facebook ended up with stock options worth $200M. To have the same reward as a founder, you will need a $2B valuation!

So with these odds stacked up against you, why don’t you take a shot on something that matters?

A beautiful story that comes to mind here is about Jim Carrey’s father. He could have been a great comedian himself, but he instead decided to take a safer job as an accountant to provide for his family. Unfortunately, 12 years later he was laid off from the “safe job” and the family struggled.

As an Entrepreneur, you are in an even more perilous situation, as you are already taking the least safe path and compounding the danger by working on something that does not entirely move you and you feel is important for the world, is literally taking the worst of both worlds!

If you are worried that working on something meaningful is necessarily harder, don’t! As Lin Kayser, serial Entrepreneur and founder of Hyperganic puts it:

It is the same effort whether you start a small or big startup, so you better do something meaningful. In fact, it is much easier to do something big than doing something small. You will get much more advice and support, because people will care about it!

You have absolutely nothing to lose and everything to gain! If you are unsure if you are deluding yourself about the importance of your startup, ask yourself the question that Peter Thiel proposes in his book Zero to One:

Why should someone join your company as its 20th engineer when she could go work at Google for more money and more prestige?

A good answer should never be something generic like: “their stock options will be worth more here”, or “We have a really cool culture” but you rather need something very specific to your company; why your mission is so compelling and why no one else will get it done.

If you can’t answer that, then not only are you running the risk of building something no one needs, but you most probably will not be able to attract the great talent you need to build it in the first place.

This is not intended to be a message of despair, but rather a wake-up call. The world is full of problems waiting for bold entrepreneurs to solve them. You can touch a billion souls, change the way people perceive the world, and push us forward as a species. So please, do that! The world needs your talent, drive, and passion!

PS: Here is a shortlist of apps that totally changed my life over the course of last year and I could not be more grateful for their founders. You too can build something unique that really helps others out there, who would gladly pay you for it:

• Readwise
• Obsidian
• Notion
• Stoic

Originally published at http://omarhedeya.com on December 12, 2021.