JFDI Mentor Rowan Simpson talked about happiness at Monday’s talk, “The Mythical Startup.” A surprising topic to share with startups enduring sleepless nights and endless coding? No, not at all.
Rowan told the crowd:
“Work on stuff that you enjoy, with people that you like and who are like you, and be patient because it will take you a lot longer than you think (and it may not succeed at all).”
It’s passion that will get you through the turbulent moments and keep you coding through sleepless nights. When you have that passion, working at a startup isn’t just a bit better than being an employee, “it’s 100x or 1000x better.”
Rowan borrowed Chris Conley’s Happiness equation to illustrate this point:
Happiness = Wanting What You Have / Having What You Want
“Most of us spend time working on the denominator” said Rowan. That’s silly. He continued, “It’s easier to manage your expectations than to get a corporate jet.”
Rowan also warned against wantrapreneurship – waiting for a big check before executing the idea, aiming for corporate jets, yachts, and beach vacations. If you are looking for wealth and material gain, then taking a corporate job is the easier, more rational path toward your goals.
Rowan’s point connects to something the Frog asked in the JFDI Manifesto:
“What stories are you best at telling? What’s the story that only you can tell?”
We posed these questions to the JFDI startups during the application process and again during the grueling first few days of the JFDI–Innov8 2012 Bootcamp in Singapore.
The JFDI Manifesto continues, “somewhere out there is a problem that only you can solve; there is a startup that only you can found. Found that startup. Solve that problem. Don’t found some other startup that belongs to somebody else.”
Visit us at JFDI and you’ll see tired, homesick and overwhelmed founders … but when you ask them about their startups and what they’ve been up to these past 2 weeks, what stands out is the excitement in their eyes and the width of their smiles.