I have worked for two start-ups and have started two of my own and I can tell you, start-ups are a pain and can be pretty horrible.
However, I’m just that type of person. In High School and college I started two wrestling teams, two professional clubs and one fraternity and I tell you, that no matter how badly you screw it up, there are few feelings as great as starting something of your own. At a start-up every employee is important, every employee is felt and every day, good or bad is amazing and gets you one step closer. Every day feels like you are making or breaking it. There are few ways to truly live outside of working at a start-up.
But what is a start-up? Well, a start-up is not your web design business that you run from your mom’s house, it is not your law firm or gardening service. A Start-up is an idea that will change the world and it will change the world because a start-up creates a business that has never existed. But not only is it going to solve the problem for one person, but it will solve it for the world right off the bat. Start-ups are here because internet is so new, with applications and problems so vast that today is the day when all the tools are being created and the only people who can create them are the kids who are graduating college.
We need more of these kids to start, lead and create these companies because the more of these kids there are, the faster we will find out the true possibilities of the internet.
But a start-up is not just for programmers. A start-up allows business people to solve business problems never addressed, for HR people to go out and find people to fill roles which didn’t exist before, for finance people to solve financial problems never seen in financial world.
A start-up no matter how small or seemingly insignificant is about bringing something that never existed and will become something that will touch many businesses and many people and change the way we see and use internet. The people who enter one start-up will go on to another and another and create things which they otherwise wouldn’t have. The people at a start-up will know what it is like to work, to be valued for their work and to do something that actually has an impact. They know that without them, this start-up wouldn’t happen, that its trajectory is altered by them every single day.
Many start-ups are sold off and disappear, their thumb print on the internet gone or never truly seen. The people running those start-ups, the founders, often find themselves lost. They are no longer able to create that drive they had before, they cannot find the inspiration they had as a college student and they try and fail at other start-ups until they become a VC or just a regular old business man.
Anyone can start a business, most can run a business, but very very few can create a start-up.
People who start a start-up, are those who had to start a start-up.
not-rushin 