“As one grows older, one sees the impossibility of imposing your will on the chaos with brute force. But, if you’re patient, there may come the moment when, while you are eating an apple, the solution presents itself and says, ‘Here I am!’” – Albert Einstein
The reason why someone today would start a startup is not very different from why explorers found travel routes to India or why prehistoric human created Oldowan tools.
It all revolves around the basic human desire to explore (curiosity), grow and express ourselves.
Studies suggest we fear an unknown outcome more than we do a known bad one. However, some humans will still want to explore unknown outcomes.
Why?
I think it’s all for self-fulfilment and personal happiness, which we either derive directly by satisfying our basic desires (happiness from the journey) or our hope for a (perceived) favourable future outcome (happiness in reaching the destination).
I seen multiple reasons why most entrepreneurs begin, but there’s always a primary reason or goal. Perhaps, we unconsciously create the secondary goals to justify our actions to ourselves, in pursuit of the primary goal.
Here are some reasons which I encounter often:
- To explore, learn and satisfy our curiosity
- To fulfil a vision, which we strongly believe in
- To help and support a certain audience (care)
- To generate more money and/or become famous
Something I’d like to point out here is that there’s nothing wrong in starting a startup to make money. Essentially you are trying to grow your wealth, which is not very different from someone trying to learn (satisfy their curiosity) and grow their wealth of knowledge.
However, you should also know that startups carry a high risk-reward ratio and there may be better opportunities for you to make money or become famous. I’m not trying to discourage anyone but you may not make any money for a very long time, so if making money is your primary goal, you may have better options.
Now, if you’ve noticed carefully, all the reasons which I stated above are actually the same: You’re doing it for yourself. Even if you want to do it to helps others,you’re doing it because helping others will bring your happiness or make you feel better.
This is different from being selfish and putting your benefits at the cost of others, but it is extremely important to remember that on a personal level, the real reason is that you’re doing it for yourself.
Do not confuse the “why” with “what”. For instance, If your reason for starting a startup is to solve a specific problem, that’s an action. “I want to solve a problem” is what you want to do, not why you want to do it.
Let me explain this with another example.
Why do you fall back on earth after you jump? (technically, earth falls a bit towards you too)
Gravity, right?
Incorrect. The correct answer is: We don’t know.
Well, we know what happens and can calculate it, thus gravity, but we actually still don’t know why one particle attracts another.
This is how confusing it can be. We’ve been confusing between the whys and whats all our lives.
The single most-important benefit of realising this, is for the purpose of personal clarity. If you wake up every morning and remind yourself of why you are doing what you are doing, it will start reflecting into your daily decisions.
Work forward from here
After you truly realise why you want to start a startup, the next step should be to explore what you want to do.
What?
It doesn’t work the other way around and I’ve made this mistake myself: “Deciding what you want to do without a deep introspection into why”.
The problem with this approach is that there could be a disconnect in the “what” and personal happiness, which we don’t realise immediate. This happens more often that we think it does.
This has great impact on our motivation, which can decline even further with time and at some point, we’ll give up. Even if you are able to achieve what you had aimed for, it will not bring the content you had originally thought it will.
You’d probably already know that startups are very difficult. Entrepreneurs who are successful today, will always tell you about the highs and lows and they will also tell you about incidents when they were just about to give up, but something kept them going.
That “something” has a lot to do with personal motivation.
The stronger the connection between the why and the what, the greater the motivation is and to be able to build a very strong co-relation between the two, your personal happiness should not be based on an external results/targets or goals. In simpler words:
Journey > destination
If you truly enjoy what you are doing and it provides true self-fulfilment and personal happiness, there’s nothing which can stop you from whatever you’re doing.
How?
This should be the least of our concern and there’s enough content written about this subject.
I’d recommend that you read Paul Graham’s remarkable essay on this subject and Sam Altman’s video lecture series on “How to Start a Startup“.
So for all of the beginners who want to start their startup.. Best Wishes From me... Cheers