Startup my career 2.1

This is a follow up to my previous blog post, where I described how I said goodbye to my job and decided to follow my passion.

Starting with something new takes a few steps. A few steps more than I originally thought. There are a few things important to me in this. It’s dedication, development, and a clear direction. This is how I handled this since November.

Dedicate

And have the patience to get there! In my last blog post I described my dedication to restart my career and how I stopped doing what I did to achieve this. This doesn’t mean that my next job will be right away my end station. I would like to work on something that helps me to get there. It’s also OK to first focus on developing my skills and expertise before doing what I eventually hope to do. “I would like to enable startups to live up to their full potential”… someday.

Develop

Procrastinating was tempting at first, but it was more fun, relevant and motivating when I just started! Some learnings were:

• Learn about everything that is relevant. The best for me was to choose a few things I want to learn and focus on these, one by one. Learning by doing. I would like to help people who have an idea and who want to know if it’s relevant for others as well. So I followed an online course and practiced in real life how to validate my own ideas.
• Understand the scene. What are the hubs in the Netherlands or even Europe and the world? Who is providing relevant updates? What are the trends? Who is providing products or services?
• Talk with people in the industry. Hear from them what they do on a day-to-day basis. If they are not available, try to find interviews, blog posts or other media to read into their world.

Direction

Defining my mission helps me to focus on what is important. I refine it regularly, because the words don’t seem to cover what I mean. This is great! Because it gets closer every time.

In my last blog post, I wrote the mission: “Transform good and innovative ideas into products and services”. After some pivoting ;) I think this expresses my direction the clearest:

Excite people to turn an visionary and innovative idea into a product or service and organize a company around it.

I noticed during an job interview that I somehow didn’t feel too enthusiastic, even though everything sounded great. It didn’t exactly fit with what I had in mind and I couldn’t name it. After updating my mission, I noticed that the position was focussing on the latter part, but not on the first. I concluded that it is important for me to learn about the early phase of a company and not how to only organize the company best.

This mission is clear to me, but I need to develop some more skills and expertise to be able to this the best I can. Therefore I am motivated to learn more, not only at home or by meetings, but also by being part of a team again.

I would like to experience the challenges of a startup and (help to) find solutions for these. I would like to do this via one of these ways:

• joining an early-stage startup team as a team member
• pursue an idea with full dedication and start a startup myself

Next steps

Now it’s a matter of weighing the options. Where do I want to work? What are my financial expectancies? Where can I learn the most? Am I ready to be an entrepreneur? Will I find a startup where I experience a fit with their mission and team? Let’s find it out!