I just finished TMF . I was a bit turned off by the title originally, but it's been the first thing that's prompted me to realize entrepreneurship is what I need to pursue and being in a typical corporate job, bumming it, getting a PhD, or any other path that occurred to me is not worth my time.
For the interim between college and now (current age: 29), I've been living cheaply in Asia, studying Mandarin, working on a master's, doing part-time work in software, and generally just enjoying life. After I finished my MS in computer science, I felt I needed to get on the path straight and narrow, get a typical corporate job, and become a more upstanding member of productive society. So I moved to California and got one of those upstanding jobs with an established company whose mission I respect.
But... F this. Seriously. F*** it to hell.
I've been working full-time for roughly a year, and it's terrible. I imagine everyone around here knows that, though, so I won't go into the details of the soul-sucking reality of a corporate office.
So, I feel like I am ready to launch, but I've yet to decide into *what*
My ultimate goals:
- Probably start a software company and implement some of the ideas I have bubbling in my head
- Definitely be location independent
How to get there is uncertain. I'm unsure whether to dive directly into SaaS, or whether I should try my hand at e-commerce. I would like to quit my job ASAP, so I'm leaning towards e-commerce, but I already feel that mindset is doomed to failure, as the looming thought in my head is less "what would the market need?" and more "dear God lemme quit NOW!".
Short-term tentative plan:
- Save money at corporate job, don't get fired before I quit at the end of 2017
- Work on e-commerce on the side
- Move back to Asia in 2018, live cheaply and/or work part-time, spending most time working on my venture
- Alternative would be to move to a start-up company to gain more experience on that side of things - but that would just be temporary
Points to leverage:
- Software skills (experience in running the back-end of an e-commerce company on multiple channels, some front-end web dev, academic knowledge in algorithms/big data/machine learning, more nerdism)
- Mandarin skills (could be useful - might look to China/Taiwan for business options)
- Do or die attitude (I can't imagine doing anything else, really)
Points that hold me back:
- Ingrained follower attitude (I can see quite clearly now how education systems are geared towards producing workers who do as they're told. I have a hard time trusting my own ideas without a stamp of approval from an "authority".)
- Fear and self-doubt (Everybody else is working their jobs diligently or not so diligently. Why would I be successful at striking out from this path?)
So I'm super excited to have found this forum, although I remain skeptical of tales of success filtered through the internet. I trust that at least some of them are true, and I'm looking forward to learning from them. :-D
For the interim between college and now (current age: 29), I've been living cheaply in Asia, studying Mandarin, working on a master's, doing part-time work in software, and generally just enjoying life. After I finished my MS in computer science, I felt I needed to get on the path straight and narrow, get a typical corporate job, and become a more upstanding member of productive society. So I moved to California and got one of those upstanding jobs with an established company whose mission I respect.
But... F this. Seriously. F*** it to hell.
I've been working full-time for roughly a year, and it's terrible. I imagine everyone around here knows that, though, so I won't go into the details of the soul-sucking reality of a corporate office.
So, I feel like I am ready to launch, but I've yet to decide into *what*
My ultimate goals:
- Probably start a software company and implement some of the ideas I have bubbling in my head
- Definitely be location independent
How to get there is uncertain. I'm unsure whether to dive directly into SaaS, or whether I should try my hand at e-commerce. I would like to quit my job ASAP, so I'm leaning towards e-commerce, but I already feel that mindset is doomed to failure, as the looming thought in my head is less "what would the market need?" and more "dear God lemme quit NOW!".
Short-term tentative plan:
- Save money at corporate job, don't get fired before I quit at the end of 2017
- Work on e-commerce on the side
- Move back to Asia in 2018, live cheaply and/or work part-time, spending most time working on my venture
- Alternative would be to move to a start-up company to gain more experience on that side of things - but that would just be temporary
Points to leverage:
- Software skills (experience in running the back-end of an e-commerce company on multiple channels, some front-end web dev, academic knowledge in algorithms/big data/machine learning, more nerdism)
- Mandarin skills (could be useful - might look to China/Taiwan for business options)
- Do or die attitude (I can't imagine doing anything else, really)
Points that hold me back:
- Ingrained follower attitude (I can see quite clearly now how education systems are geared towards producing workers who do as they're told. I have a hard time trusting my own ideas without a stamp of approval from an "authority".)
- Fear and self-doubt (Everybody else is working their jobs diligently or not so diligently. Why would I be successful at striking out from this path?)
So I'm super excited to have found this forum, although I remain skeptical of tales of success filtered through the internet. I trust that at least some of them are true, and I'm looking forward to learning from them. :-D
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