It’s been almost five years since I started my last startup.
I remember clearly the heady blend of optimism and anxiety that came with filing our incorporation papers, followed by the pride and sweat and joy of brainstorming, building and launching our first real product.
I just started a new startup with two great friends, Amit and Drew, and those feelings are back. The five intervening years have brought successes, failures, and hard-learned lessons, yet I couldn’t feel more sanguine about the future.
I should probably be more worried about the months ahead—there’s nothing to anchor me and my cofounders except our own determination and wits. It’s a long, hard road, and startups fail for a lot of reasons.
Yet despite all that, I still feel optimistic.
I’ll do my best to correct my mistakes from my last go-round1. Yet even if I fail this time, I feel like I’ve already won. Inertia is one of the strongest forces in the world—there are so many different things acting to prevent one from doing something, from making something. And somehow, we’ve managed to give ourselves the opportunity to really create something awesome.
All we have to do now is make the most of it.
1 See my previous post about putting your career in stealth mode for one of the mistakes I made.