Build a Startup is Hard, Failure Hurts Me, but Why I Keep Doing It?
As this February comes I add a year to myself. I feel insecure every time I realize I'm already spent so much time on what I called my passion. Never thought the experience build this company of mine will be easy. And yet I think of doing something else for my career. Here and there I'm trying to find what to do in order to make my startup works. But occasionally I’m wonder is there any other career I want to pursue.
A little context about myself, I am now building a startup on blockchain technology named Suarsocial and held the position as CMO. I’m also own 2 company named CUBIC (an Incubator business in Bandung Indonesia) & Workspace 53 (a co-working space). Despite the company that I own, I just get the salary from Suarsocial because I don't do operational work on CUBIC nor Workspace 53. I build CUBIC & Workspace53 before Suarsocial (I & friend found Cubic in 2014), last year (2018) I decided to focus on Suarsocial.
What is startup
For me, startups is a way to do what I need to achieve. I start to do the entrepreneurial thing in high school. It’s who I am. Not that I don't try to work at another company but I don't quite interested. Not because I don't like taking an order or anything, nor because of the money. I just don't feel needed to find work. I just see the world has so much to offer and so many things that we can do. So? I just do! Do the work that I see need to be done, not sending my CV or anything similar to that. I do have some experience of work at companies, 2 times just for a few months, its because I need to learn and at some point I need the cash. But then I realize that I can do both learn & earn some cash from selling stuff and do many things on the internet.
Startups itself has a definition of strife for tech-based innovation, do it fast, and do it with a unique business model. We so often lose sight of the fact that startups are not their products. The values that the company creates is located not in the product itself but with the people and their organization who built it. These days, almost every business, especially in the IT sector, seems to be termed a ‘Tech Startup’. And it is wrong! Technology company, early business, and startup are different.
A startup is a human institution designed to deliver a new product or service under conditions of extreme uncertainty. (Eric Rise, 2014)
A startup has a high degree of uncertainty because it has to be scalable, repeatable, and also creating a new behavior for the customer becoming new solution. A startup aims to be the best, to become Unicorn (a start-up company valued at more than a billion dollars, typically in the software or technology sector, (Merriam Webster dictionary)).
What is failure
Do we need to attain the success except that we get the failure? So who has the power to judge who is the success and who isn't? Society? Parent? Because of what? Money? Power?
We set our own goal, our own success standard. Everyone start different and finish different in life. What makes me miserable and feel like a failure is when I’m comparing myself to others. I know what to do but still, I feel hurt here and there because of my own target, ambition, and plan that did not work as I hope to be.
I need to change my view of achievement to choose happiness. Wheater I’m happy or sad in life is my choice. We get some success in life, a small one even a big one.
Failure is a need in order to become a better version, I need to fail at some degree. If there is nothing wrong there is nothing you should change, but there is always something wrong. Problems are our companion in our life, that's what I believe. In another side of problems, there is always an opportunity to make something better. Our stomach must hurt in order to get the six pack right?
“Failure is so important. We speak about success all the time. It is the ability to resist failure or use failure that often leads to greater success. I’ve met people who don’t want to try for fear of failing.” J.K. Rowling
It's a process. Its nothing like instant ramen. Yup, I realize that build startup should be hard. It's not for everyone, there a price for that achievement. I do aware that everything great not come easy. I also realize self-sabotage occasionally occur when we try hard on something. It's hurting me like crazy, makes me sick, and I'm crying and feel so depressed because of this vague thing called “my startup”.
Nothing great comes easy
Great thing gain its value from the rarity of occurrence. If something comes naturally and we can get it easy it won't get the added value. Life is worth the struggle and the challenge because we get what we work for. Well, not all the time but most of the time. Gold has more value than wood because of the rarity and its function value. Even water has more value in the desert than on the side of the river. Fish is cheaper if we located near the coast rather than in the city and also big fish are located deep in the ocean far from land.
I think I’m in love
Lol, because of all the trouble and all the challenges that I have been through I think I’m falling for my work. I do really love the process. The Hurt that comes from the progress of my work becomes something that I craving for more to explore. Something about the cloud and the dirt of doing startup makes me feel alive more than doing anything else.
The big picture and their end game (what I call the “clouds”). And I get it — the dream is what drives you. The dirt — the skills, the talent, and the grind that gets you there. You want to be an equally good architect as you are a mason. You’ve got to be able to simultaneously think at a high level and get your hands dirty. (Garyvee, 2016)
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This article is one of my 5 Things series a part of a longer-term project that I am doing to better understand startup success & serve the customer better. Feel free to use the figures by referencing this article.
I’m Faris Sundara Putra Co-Founder & CMO Suarsocial: a Community Crowdsource Platform Powered by Blockchain Technology.
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