Roller Coaster Or Not?

The common wisdom about startups is they are roller coasters. Especially for investors and founders. I offer to challenge this opinion. A startup is the most secure guarantee of a success. Both on a personal development and an investment front.

The reason is a startup is the most effective learning environment you can imagine.

Through deep personal involvement and through an extremely broad and complex problems that need to be solved. Running a startup is probably more effective (in terms of a learning curve) than Stanford, MIT, or any other top rated university.

You just have to be open to learn.

And if you are, there is this continuous supply of knowledge every day, every hour, almost every second. Guaranteed. No other environment creates so many opportunities for creative problem solving, trials, testing hypothesis, and iterating all of that in rapidly spinning cycles.

Of course it will not only be smiley and lazy days. There will be a lot of rain and ice. And it will take a lot of effort. And you will be waking in the night frightened and crying like a baby. Hopeless and cold. But that is yet another opportunity to learn on becoming immune and stronger. Ain't a glass always half full?

Even if a startup fails as a project, the educational aspect of it is always highly positive. And the knowledge and experience gained can then be put to work in the next iteration.

And of course it is great if a startup as a project is successful. But that also means it might not have been ambitious enough in the first place. Climbing a hill is easy. Climbing an alpine ridge is more challenging but more rewarding too. And you can learn and improve skills much more. With these skills climbing even more difficult mounting will be within reach. You will never reach K2 if all you've done so far was walking flat grasslands.

So here it is: the guaranteed way to be successful. Become a founder.