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  • What is the worst part of being an entrepreneur?

    Ankita Katdare

    Administrator

    Updated: Oct 26, 2024
    Views: 1.8K
    This discussion was overdue here. Most entrepreneurs-in-the-making prepare themselves for the world of startup by reading success stories of other entrepreneurs.

    If you only read about the big success stories, you might think that being an entrepreneur is the coolest thing ever. Even though the world has moved its attention to startups and entrepreneurship, and there's so much going for a founder these days, there are major things that one has to acknowledge, know & understand about the life of an entrepreneur.

    Dedicating this discussion to listing the worst parts of being an entrepreneur.

    Who wants to go first here?

    PS: This discussion is not about cribbing or crying about the hardships of entrepreneurship. This is rather supposed to be a collection of the realities of lives of entrepreneurs, reading which wanna-be founders can learn 😀
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  • Ankita Katdare

    Administrator • Jun 15, 2015

    I'll set the dice rolling.

    There is no one to give you directions and there is certainly no laid out road-map. You have to fix the time table on your own and remind yourself that you have to follow it.
    ^ This isn't always easy. 😭

    Another big frustrating part about the life of an entrepreneur is not knowing whether the work you are doing at a given moment is of real value for the company or is a complete waste of time. 👀 ☕
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  • Shreyas Sule

    Member • Jun 15, 2015

    Ankita Katdare
    Another big frustrating part about the life of an entrepreneur is not knowing whether the work you are doing at a given moment is of real value for the company or is a complete waste of time. 👀 ☕
    Curiosity: Do you evaluate your work often and try to understand whether you chose the correct parameters to do it? I agree it must be very frustrating when you don't have set standards to compare! Just compete with yourself?
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  • Kaustubh Katdare

    Administrator • Jun 15, 2015

    The worst part is this-
    • No one acknowledges your work when you are small in size
    • People will generally think that you're a failure
    • People will continue to think that you will give up, eventually
    • You will not know whether you'll 'make it'
    • At times, enjoyment will turn into pain and the feeling will go from bad to worse
    • You will keep thinking 'What about the expectations my parents had from me?'
    • You won't receive payments on time
    • You won't be able to do anything against people / companies / clients who do not honor the contract
    ...and there are several other things which I will mention at some other time 😀
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  • Ankita Katdare

    Administrator • Jun 15, 2015

    Shreyas Sule
    Just compete with yourself?
    Yep. That's pretty much what it is. The competition is with your own previous work.
    On the other hand, if a business lies in a segment that has many competitors ready to steal your pie, even before you have lifted the fork, well you have to be in competitive mode 24x7. Not only do you have to build a product that is better than others, you also have to strive to bring it to the market as early as possible.

    Shreyas Sule
    Do you evaluate your work often and try to understand whether you chose the correct parameters to do it?
    Evaluation of work can get very difficult when there are no set processes for it.
    For instance, if you even want to measure your own productivity for the whole week, there are no better ways than striking things off your to-do list. There are some online tools for task tracking, but that is that. Only you and your small team needs to log-in and check whether tasks are being logged, allocated & completed on time.

    In short, you are your own boss - but that's not a pretty thing if you are not disciplined.
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  • Ankita Katdare

    Administrator • Jun 17, 2015

    Tagging #-Link-Snipped-# #-Link-Snipped-# to share their experiences here.
    Anyone else here running their own startup?
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  • Manish Goyal

    Member • Jun 17, 2015

    For me my social life has pretty screwed up, sometimes I really feel, for whom I am working if I have no time to spend for me even.
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  • Kaustubh Katdare

    Administrator • Jun 17, 2015

    Manish Goyal
    For me my social life has pretty screwed up, sometimes I really feel, for whom I am working if I have no time to spend for me even.
    I personally have been able to manage my time well. Maybe it's down to the nature of business. I was speaking with my school friend who's now a CA by profession and runs his own consultancy. He too said he's not been able to dedicate time to his family.

    Shreyas Sule
    Curiosity: Do you evaluate your work often and try to understand whether you chose the correct parameters to do it?
    Frankly speaking; I've always hated performance reviews. I think the performance is a result of sum total of the team - so if a startup is doing well; the team should be doing well too. If it's not growing at the speed it should - the blame goes to entire team.

    I really think there should be a 'breakthrough' in performance reviews with focus shifting from individuals to teams.
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  • Shreyas Sule

    Member • Jun 18, 2015

    Kaustubh Katdare
    Frankly speaking; I've always hated performance reviews. I think the performance is a result of sum total of the team - so if a startup is doing well; the team should be doing well too. If it's not growing at the speed it should - the blame goes to entire team.

    I really think there should be a 'breakthrough' in performance reviews with focus shifting from individuals to teams.
    Yeah by "you" I was referring to the CE team. I agree Performance reviews wont hold good unless you have hired someone to do a specific job. If all members are entrepreneurs (which is different from employer and employees), individual performance reviews can be futile.
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  • Ankita Katdare

    Administrator • Jul 25, 2015

    Most entrepreneurs I know are handling either the administrative side of the business or the technical side. Very few first-generation entrepreneurs know how to handle the company's finances. And it's a big pain if you don't know how to handle your company's income and expenses. There's a lot of learning there and most entrepreneurs won't enjoy this boring process, but it's very crucial.

    Even when you hire and accountant or CA, to file your taxes, write contracts and invoices, in the initial days of running a startup, entrepreneurs have to go through a ton of paper work and it is one of worst parts.
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