Entrepreneurship Is Not Sexy
Honestly, one of the best posts on the real life of an entrepreneur I have read all year.
They didn’t start with a grand idea, a patent, or even funding in many
cases. Some of the businesses were in competitive spaces that you would
have thought they were nuts to go into. Time after time after time, the
story was not sexy. It was about grinding it out. It was a story of
will. It was a story of perseverance. It was a story of doing tasks
that, from the outside looking in, would seem boring, dry, and
monotonous.
The quote reminded me of an entrepreneur that came to talk to one of my classes when I was still in college. He had sold his company a few years before for a tidy sum to a huge corporation and said the biggest key to their success was outlasting the competition.
Too many entrepreneurs stop after they build the product. They think
that building products is what makes them an entrepreneur. But
entrepreneurship is about building businesses, and the product is just
one part of that.
This is the phase Noopsi is currently in. We've built product but we aren't sure how to market it. I am not a "networking" guy, preferring the life of a wallflower over being the center of attention, but it has to be done. We have to put our product, and ourselves, out there so Noopsi can become a real business, not just a website some guys put up on the internet.
Now, my favorite quote about how to start and what to expect:
People often tell me that they want to start their own business, they
just need an idea. What they really need is to just start doing
something. [...] So, when you think about starting a business, don’t do it because you
think it will be sexy. It probably won’t be. Instead, it will be about
grinding it out for customers, constantly learning, making lots of
mistakes, and some beating your head against a wall. It won’t be fast,
and it won’t be easy, but in some strange way, you will probably love
it.
Seriously, go now and read the post. When you're done, here is the Hacker News link if you want even more thoughts on the post.