I have done it, instead of seeking regular employment with a consulting agency, an MNE or even a startup I have decided to go at it on my own. I will try my luck with connex.io which has the goal to automate the management of your address book. I jumped of the cliff! But what does this mean?

Quite some monetary costs are associated with trying to establish your own company. First of all there is the direct cost of scraping together the capital needed to fund at least the early stages of your own company. Then there are the indirect opportunity costs of the salary you give up by choosing to work for yourself. And finally there are other, non monetary, “costs” such as a reduced standard of living because of the salary one gives up etc.
Funding connex.io does not require a lot of capital but the loss of salary is quite substantial. This means I have to minimize my costs of living. This results in me living with my parents again and reducing all other expenses to a bare minimum (no vacation, no gadgets, no concerts etc.)

Besides the costs there are risks associated with the decision of trying it on your own. Only one or two out of ten startups become a monetary success, four just scrape by and neither make nor lose any substantial amounts of money. Such startups often are called the “living dead”, they just keep on existing because founders are not willing to admit that it would be much more productive to move on and tackle another project. The remaining four or five startups seize to exist rather fast. All in all this means that in my decision to go at it on my own I face the risk of failure and the consequences of failure. And I also need to avoid to get stuck in a “living dead” scenario.

Besides the costs and risks just described there obviously need to be benefits of choosing to fund your own company. The most important benefit is that I can do what I really like. At connex.io I work at the intersection between technology and business which is what I like to do. But there are benefits beyond that: I don’t have to work in a large corporation or sell myself and my values out to some corporate overlord. There also is the possibility to earn a lot of money if successful. By taking the risk of failure I also get rewarded with a potentially higher payout.

Therefore the decision basically boils down to a simple question: Are the costs and the risk of failure outweighed by the actual and potential benefits? For me the answer to that question had to be yes. Without any serious commitments and having just finished my studies the decision became much less painful and a lot less risky, my current situation mitigated the costs and risks.

Since two weeks I am now working around the clock to make my dream of making address book management an automated task happen and so far it feels good. But what happens if I fail with connex.io? Companies around the world are more and more looking for people that are entrepreneurial which means that this definitely will not be a waste and if it turns out that I like the startup game as much as I think I do I will probably just try again and again.