This past weekend I was participating in this ‘Startup hackathon’ competition. It was really fun and exciting, and I got to work on a new iOS app. I met this guy who had the idea for a social fashion sharing app, and like everybody else there, we worked through the weekend coming up with a business plan to pitch to VCs who were gonna come judge at the end of it. Hacking away through the weekend, I got to learn a few new things which was cool, though we didn’t win, I met new people who were passionate about what they did and what amazed me the most throughout was all the great new ideas people were coming up with and just the pure innovative and entrepreneurial spirit that filled the room. That charged me up, and gave me the boost to pound away at Xcode all weekend long!
The sponsors for the event were SendHub, which looks like a cool new platform, and their hackers were there the first night to give us a motivational talk. What the guy said was interesting, and made me think. He said that entrepreneurship is just about success or failure, and there’s nothing in between. What sets you apart and makes you unique in your pursuit is your single minded focus on what you want to achieve and how you get there. That was pretty powerful, and really makes me believe in my own determination and power of will.
Entrepreneurship is an exciting thing, and something that I would definitely want to pursue. Seeing all those people with their ideas, and brainstorming with them was a learning experience because I’m lazy in concretizing my own ideas. I have a text file of random ideas I’ve had on my desktop, but I never go back to work on them. Now, I will.
Another lesson I take away is, that unless you push yourself you’ll never know where your boundaries lie. Through the weekend, there were a lot of points where I just wanted to give up because I couldn’t implement some feature or something, but powering through those times makes you transcend the pain and reach a new level of zen. It’s what separates the men from the boys.
There’s this other blog post I was reading, and it made me think about why I’d want to start my own company. The idea of being my own boss is probably a compelling one on a lazy sunday, but the crux of the argument is what it’s all about – your focus on solving a problem in your way that makes a difference. That’s what development today is all about, and as I saw and heard from the VCs today, your pitch needs to be solid if you want that funding, and even if you’re paying yourself you’d probably need more motivation on a daily basis.
