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Week 5: Starting your own company

Starting new business surely is not for everyone, but anyway I want to recommend it to
everybody. There are a couple of reasons why even failing at running your own business
can make your life better.


The best part about setting up a company now is that you have nothing to lose.
You don't need to quit your job to start a company. You can work on a side project and
when you see it's getting traction you can spend more and more time on it. You can shut
it down anytime. Remember you are still young - it hurts more when your business didn't
work out while you have different commitments like family, loans etc.
Some people argue that this is not the best time for new challenges - we all hear about the
financial crisis, raising taxes.. History shows that it's simply not true and a good business
can start also during difficult times. There are many people who believe that a crisis is the
best time to start and I can't agree more.

Furthermore, nowadays it's easier than ever to find funding for your idea. There are many
incubators/accelerators backed by EU funds (first class red tape - no need to explain), but
there is also a huge network of business angels (private investors, who invest their own
money), VCs and more. In some countries there are even more incubators than startups...
I personally know many investors who want to put their money into new companies, but
there are not many good ideas out there worth investing. Why should you consider external
funding? It's simple:

1. You don't need to spend your own money to validate the product you create (security).

2. It helps in scaling your own business, like building your network, customer development
in Asia or USA, heavy marketing etc.

Running a company is tough. You need to deal with people - your employees/co-founders
can become your real friends but also you need to be careful because like everywhere you
can stumble upon people who just want to screw you over. But you need to deal with it and
being successful or not - you gain experience. One of my favourite sayings is "Experience
is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted".

It also helps you understand how 'the system' works. Even if you go back to being
employed somewhere else, you are better employee now, you can look at everyday
challenges from a different perspective, because you know how it is to run a business what
it consists of, you understand better what is expected from you and why it is like that.

Finally, I'd like to finish with a quotation by Winston Churchill: "Success consists of going
from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm."

I'm really curious what is your opinion about starting your own business, so I'm waiting for
your comments, thanks!

Comments

Unknown said…
In my opinion a good idea and a selfconfidence is all you really need to make a successful buisness. I agree that now is the best time to try building your own company, but i'm not sure if it's the Poland u wanna try this in. We have so many bureaucracy that u can try but it will be difficult. Aldo if u can success with all the help form EU or incubator and get pass the bureaucracy u can start making some money out of your idea. Good luck for all young buisnessmans.
Natalia said…
In my opinion you don't have to create own business to gain experience and fulfill your career. During my carrer I've meet two kinds of people. One of them were full of energy they knew what they want - and how to get it. In example experience in some area of contacts. The other ones - didn't know what to do with their lives - they wants to get only simple orders and plenty of money for doing something with minimal efort. So in my opinion if you know what you want you can get it without starting own business. I agree with Konrad that bureaucracy in Poland can kill many good ideas in Poland.
Anonymous said…
@Konrad I think it doesn't really matter if it's Poland or different country, you need the same skillset and if you are persistent, nothing can stop you.

@Natalia - 100% agree that running a business is only one of the options to gain experience and you can do that in different ways.
Hey, I'm only replying no, because I didn't notice your presentations before. Got so used to the "Week " notation, that didn't see the titles without them I suppose :P. Sorry for that! Anyway, I think it's true that it is much easier to start a company nowadays, but although you don't need much to start one, it is actually much easier to launch a successful company when you have good starting funds. In Italy a certain saying is very popular: "Money makes money". I think it's self explanatory and actually I believe it's very accurate. Anyway I think it's generally better to start off with working in a existing company and after gaining some experience and funds you might try making your own.
I fully agree with you that starting your own company is not for everybody but definitely everybody should try it. That exactly how I did 2 years ago. I really thought that starting my own company is definitely not for me. I was quite terrified about all those legal issues, taxes and many other obstacles I thought will be impossible to overcome.

But the reality surprised me in a positive way. All those things you hear on the news or read in the internet telling you how difficult is for you to start a new business are not fully true. Of course it’s not a piece of cake but an average intelligent person should cope with it with not many problems.

Running my own busies has many benefits. I’m a captain of my own ship. If I like I take the next project to work with ( I write commercial applications based on SQL databases), or I don’t if I think that it will not make me large benefits. I can cut the expenses of fuel from example form my income and pay less taxes etc.

Of course I didn’t stop working on regular bases. I still go to work for 8 hours a day, and work on my companies projects in the evening. But in time I plan to make my own business my only source if income.
diana said…
Before I started working, I remember I had used to think that I'd not like to run my own business and I had thought that working for someone else is the best for me. But after years spent as an employee, I'm slowly getting acquainted with the idea of owning a company, mostly due to big freedom it gives. But it could be only one person company. I know many people who have registered their own companies and are working for some corporations as contractors, but they still get the same perks as regular employees - laptops, sometimes cars, even paid holidays. Main motivation here is to get around tax issues. I think that's quite different kind of "running your own company" compared to creating a business where you're hiring other people, renting a dedicated place for your business, buing the equipment, investing in its growth etc. The former is not a big deal really, but the latter is quite a challenge and here I don't agree with Paweł saying that everybody should try it.
Seisyll said…
As you write starting your own company isn't so hard. The paperwork part might be easy but first you have to have an idea.
What this company is supposed to do? What are we selling? Or what service are we providing?
That part is hard, because you have to come up with something worthwhile and then even if you have it then there are other problems running the company. There might be competitors or you might just not sell your idea well enough to make profit.
I don't say you shouldn't do it. It's just not for me. Too much stress and risk
lukasz-anwajler said…
@Pawel, good to hear that, fingers crossed!
armandstanczak said…
Well, it is true, that nowadays everyone can start their own company. The problem is that not everyone knows what to do next! It is obvious that without market research and excellent business plan we shouldn’t be dreaming about our company, but if we are good at what we do and we have sales plan, I think we are half way there. Having your own company is more of a rat race, we have to be elastic towards the market and our potential customers. What you need to become an owner, you need to be independent. You are your own boss now. You have to make tough decisions concerning expansions and investigations. It’s not all good, they are times when you think – why in the world did I do this…
Cheers
Unknown said…
I am still thinking about starting my own company. It is much simpler now to start one but on the other hand we have a lot of fresh companies which face serious problems after few months on the market.
Competition is huge and without great idea or simple idea with a lot of money is very hard but still if you are brave and have a lot of time to do paperwork and what is most important you know what should be done to stay on the market nowadays go ahead!
Tomek Niezgoda said…
I too think of setting up my own business. I wouldn't treat it as a full time commitment at first, only if it ever took off and managing it would heavily collide with my day job. I believe small ideas can lead to great success. They don't have to be complete or perfected for months before release. It's a good idea to try a few different things first. Here's a link to a blog post that might add something to the talk. https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/consulting_1. It discusses consulting but mentions some key aspects, like methods of finding better clients for your business. I think many of the recommendations can be applied anywhere.

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