Should I become an Entrepreneur or do a Job?
This is a question which one has to consider from multiple point of views. I always wanted to share my experience on this question, being a co-founder of three failed startups from Transportation, Software and IoT domains and currently working in a software company, where I am a founding member.
Enough boasting 😉 So this article would be helpful mostly to the undergrads who are wondering whether they should start a company and say no to job offers. This decision is so risky and have a more weight than you think on your life.
“Entrepreneur is a person who sets up a business or businesses, taking on financial risks in the hope of profit.” — Oxford Languages
There is no success formula for how to become a successful entrepreneur, but there are lot of success stories and theories said by successful entrepreneurs and researchers. But those book knowledge or theories may not work in your context. I have heard this example about entrepreneurship. Becoming a successful entrepreneur is like, you jump from a top of a mountain with some materials. While you are falling down you prepare a gadget capable of flying or safely landing you. This is close to the experience you get when you start a company.
Choosing to become an entrepreneur is a hard decision because you’ll have to make lot of sacrifices. It’s the sacrifice you make saying no to an offer with a big salary. It’s the sacrifice you make while your parents, girlfriend or wife will say not to do this, it’s more secure to do a job. It’s the sacrifice when you make while your girlfriend leaves you for a guy having a decent salary or a guy living the dream life abroad. It’s the sacrifice you make while you work without salary for months when your company is having hard time receiving payments from clients. This sacrifices list goes so and so on.
Considering the pros of becoming an entrepreneur, if you get a set of loyal and hardworking partners you can become financially independent within 2,3 years depending on the context of your startup. People will respect you saying that, this guy has done this great work and formed this company. Your dream car will become a reality when your company becomes financially stable and you gets profit. One can entitle him as CEO, CTO, CMO or whatever the nice designation he likes.
But becoming an entrepreneur seeing only pros and thinking that you’ll be successful quickly and easily will be the worst decision you’ll take in your life. When you consider the successful companies in the world, founders of them have made lot of sacrifices and have taken lots of hard work for many years to achieve that success. Out of the entrepreneurs in the world only very few have become successful while there are lots of failures where people don’t give much attention. People talk only about successful people like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg.
The risk of entrepreneurship lies mostly when you don’t have much experience and when you assume that your product or service will work exactly according to your plan and you’ll receive payments on time. If you don’t have prior experience on vital areas of Marketing and Business most likely your first product or company will fail. The rate of learning capability you’ll have to have if you start a company will be much higher.
If you consider doing a job, life will be easy if you love what you do with much less risk. But you are working to achieve someone else’s dream. If you become an entrepreneur you are working for yourself, or towards your dream. But if you do a job your salary is guaranteed and you’ll receive bonuses and promotions while if you are an entrepreneur your income will depend on the profit of your company.
Amidst all these pros and cons anyone can become an entrepreneur and grow entrepreneur DNA within him. But becoming successful depends on so many factors like financial discipline, rate of learning from failures, business tactics, dedication of the founding members, their priorities and their loyalty, being loyal to clients, quality of the product or service and whether the target market segment will embrace your product or service as you planned.
If you are interested more on entrepreneurship you can read these books,
- Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki
- Zero to One by Peter Thiel
- The Lean Startup by Eric Ries
- Why What and How by Simon Sinek
- The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss
Wish you all the very best in whatever you do!
I should mention these people who have helped and advised in numerous ways Heminda Jayaweera, Captain Themiya Abeywickrama, Shemal de Abrew, Sidath Devan, Pansilu Abeywickrama, Oshad de silva, Janaka Chathuranga, Surath Gajanayake.
