“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” — Winston S. Churchill
It’s been almost a year since I started to work on the idea for my own startup, Just Juno. A lot of things happened in between: I tried to work on it full time, faced financial difficulty, so I took a job and made it my side hustle.
If I look back now, I have spent a lot of last year chasing. Chasing potential clients, investors, marketing & funding opportunities, and even networks. Most of the things I chased eluded me and made me feel small. Why were we not selected in the Pitch Session A? Why did we get rejected by Accelerator B?
I must have grown a thicker skin by now. Rejection and other people’s judgement do not bother me as much anymore. However, not quitting is the bravest thing I’ve done so far.
Nothing works as planned most of the times. Great ideas fail. Execution delay. Bugs and technical glitches. Money struggles. Burn-out threat.
The only way to stay afloat is to accept and optimize what the universe put in my path.
Financial problem? Still work on a full-time job and continue to hustle my business on the side.
Venture capital not an option? I will apply for government grants or do crowdfunding or set up a donation page.
Not enough money to hire local developers? Get developers from a lower cost location.
As Luiz André Barroso, Google Fellow and VP of Engineering, put it so eloquently:
If there is a winning formula, it is this: go out there and dream big; then show up to work the next morning and relentlessly and incrementally achieve them.