From side hustle to full-time startup, I’ve spent my past two years in multiple projects. This blog doesn’t document my timeline or market analysis. I try to deep dive into various emotions I’ve experienced through my journey which could act as guide / warning (depends on how you see it)

I ultimately try to address the ‘Should you startup?’, ‘What should I brace myself to?’

Since it’s my journey, a lot of emotions and situations may not be relevant to you, or you may have a different take. ‘Could’ve done X, instead of Y’ is a line of thought that can be discussed throughout. I will ponder and share my thoughts on these lines as well.

With that introduction done, let’s get started

Itch

Every founder I’ve interacted with falls into one of the two buckets

You could be finding problems to solve

The bunch of folks, who don’t like things the way they are and setting out to solve them. The ones who have the most problem and want their way may have a great eye to find problems worth solving.

You could be the one hearing about problems waiting to be solved

If you are like me, you could be excited about opportunities. See at the market potential, adopt the problem and then solve for it.

Reason

You have a mission and personal ambition

A nobler, holier thought is some personal anecdote or missions drives you to work on a startup. Favorite story of what I’ve heard abck in college is that of ‘YourDost’ how a college suicide made the founder Richa to explore mental health and improves its accessibility as a personal mission.

You just want to build for the fun of it

I personally feel while one should definitely enjoy building and selling process to get into a startup, one could be there at a startup or start a side-gig only for the sake of fun. A lot of the fun chrome extensions, product hunt launches remind me that. Is there money potential, is there a business, got to evaluate, but is it fun to build, go for it

You want to build to make money of it

A very sound and pragmatic reason, just that you never know what will and won’t make money. Being a competitor in an existing proven business might be an easy transition, only to realise down the line that USP is unclear. One can still make a good business out of it, for sure, but if you are venturing into newer ideas and nicher problems, you bet money can’t be the sole reason, as you are likely to burn more money than earn before your product takes off, that is if it takes off.

There’s a whole FIRE community, bootstrappers out there with this mission to make money - good successes, many not-so great.

Do check out - this user who talks about why he quit bootstrapping.

But again, something like Shopify app store and others have proven avenues to make money

Reason Not To

This is a much more pragmatic section. Reasons not to do something usually sound a bit more straightforward, that applies here as well.

You have additional responsibilities

It’s not discouraging, but you have additional responsibilities then it would be tough to commit to it.

You don’t have financial backing

This is a factor which has hindered bunch of my close friends to take a stab full-time. Funded startups or bootstrapped, it takes time to build maintenance income, even more time to match your salary - all with the hope that you get liquidity and your startup really grows to make money

You are not in the mental space

I saved this for the last. I feel this is often less talked about. Well, one outlook could be, you are never fully ready, but at the same time if you are just not in the mental space to do something, then it’s not the time to startup.

Startups take a lot of mental strength, you are not getting your customers, your running out of personal funds