How to Stop Worrying and Start a Company
How to Stop Worrying and Start a CompanyIn this edition of “Ask Mario,” we talk about entrepreneurial leaps of faith, the newsletter business, and pragmatic optimism about crypto.🌟 Hey there! This is a subscriber-only edition of our premium newsletter designed to make you a better investor and technologist. Members also get access to private Q&As with me. Friends, I’m excited to share another edition of “Ask Mario,” the series in which I answer your questions about tech, venture capital, writing, and much more. In today’s edition, we dig into three great prompts:
I hope you enjoy it! And don’t forget, if you’re a member of our premium newsletter, you can submit a question for me to answer in a future edition at the bottom of the piece. I’d love to hear from you! (And if you’re not, now is the perfect time to join!) I find that I have many business plans and potential startup ideas that I could see myself pursuing. But I find it difficult to make the leap and the decision to go full steam and execute. How did you cross this gap and decide to leave the support of a “regular” job to create the Generalist? What’s your advice for someone who needs to take that first scary step? – JI felt this question in my gut, J. I have been in your shoes and remember it well. Back in 2020, when I was considering going full-time on The Generalist, I fretted about it incessantly. It seemed like such a ludicrous choice: I had spent years trying to break into venture capital with an unorthodox background, only to consider leaving it as I got my feet under me. Worse, I was thinking of doing so to start a newsletter: an alternative with lower stability and, presumably, a lower ceiling. I didn’t know anyone who had become wildly successful by running a mini-publication. In hindsight, I drastically overestimated the risk of entrepreneurship and underestimated my abilities and the upside of the opportunity. Though every business is different, as primates with a loss-aversion program running in our cranium, I think many of us are predisposed to making this kind of miscalculation. Above all, I’d try to recognize the faulty evolutionary software that might undergird your fears and cap your conviction. Beyond that, several frameworks and ideas are helpful for someone stuck in the limbo of would-be-founders. Some come from my experience, while others have been gleaned from other entrepreneurs, typically those pursuing a venture-backed path. I hope they help because the world needs more founders, and I bet you’re more than capable of building something you’d be proud to have your name on. On to the advice:
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