When my son graduated from university with a degree in electrical engineering in 2017, he didn’t join a big company for his first job. He created a tech startup with a friend.
For the next few months, his friends and his parent’s friends offered congratulations.”Congratulations on your startup! That’s so exciting!”
I didn’t offer the same “Congratulations!” cheer for starting as an end in itself. I supported him and was very proud. I knew what followed would be exciting, very hard, and risky.
It’s not that he isn’t smart, entrepreneurial, or savvy about tech opportunities.
It’s that startup veterans know that startups are just BRUTALLY HARD when you start.
Most startup ideas don’t work and turn into real businesses. That’s why they are startups. It’s worth a try.
Despite the glamorization of startups and founders and funding, most startups flame out painfully, and it’s not so fun for the founders in the end.
Early startup adventures also pummel older and more experienced entrepreneurs.
It seemed odd then that there was a universal glorification of “Congratulations on your startup ideas!!” before they started.
“Congrats!” when he was about to embark on a brutally hard adventure that usually doesn’t turn out well.
He and his co-founder friend lived in Silicon Valley for a while, then in Manila in the Philippines, and then in New York City.
He learned a lot and met many smart and helpful people. They pivoted and kept trying things.
He learned to live extremely frugally on his own, which was great for his parents to see.
After almost two years and lots of tries, the business opportunity had pivoted to a place where he wasn’t interested in it.
It had morphed into a business process optimization tool in consumer marketing for big brands, not the deep AI tech for cool startups that he was passionate about.
I got the early calls with encouraging news of progress.
Eventually, I got the calls about the hard questions and the bad news that couldn’t be avoided, and they shut it down.
It was really hard on him. It was the opposite feeling from the starting-up cheers and what he thought would happen.
I’m proud that he did it and didn’t give up without trying very hard.
But we shouldn’t be surprised that it’s brutally hard or didn’t work out, just like we shouldn’t clap for big funding.
Starting and funding are not the actual game.
Making something amazing for your customers that can turn into a bigger business is the game.
And keeping the business alive long enough to do that.
Since then, my son has worked on world-changing engineering projects with larger teams. He’s having a blast.
He says he might do a startup someday with a co-founder, but he’ll do it much differently next time.
