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Starting and running a startup, is similar to raising a baby. It requires time, attention, money, energy and loads of love and patience. You would want the baby to be toilet trained at the earliest, but it’s a process of its own. You would want your baby to walk, talk, learn, eat and so on the in the first few months, but again nature has its own course and time for everything.

Same goes with a startup, you want it to run the very next day, show sales, swell in revenue, get you profits, get you name, fame, growth, returns but here too, it has and will take its own course and its own time and hence like raising up a baby, you will need infinite patience, love and affection and not to forget my favorite ‘P‘, that is passion. However, once done well, it has its own set of rewards and these can be rewards for life, here’s an interesting take on startup sacrifices vis-a-vis rewards:

So what is it like to be in a startup? What are the sacrifices you make and for which rewards?

The biggest and the most valuable sacrifice which all startup stakeholders need to give is of time. There will be just no time for yourself, your family, your friends, your hobbies and even your nearest and dearest ones! Your startup will eventually become your near and dear one at least for a few years till you build your startup family inside the startup!

• The biggest reward here will be to see the glass half full and enjoy the freedom you get in a startup, freedom to work, freedom of speech, freedom of ideas, to be your own boss and the countless tangible as well as intangible benefits!

Another major sacrifice which many entrepreneurs have to give is of doing most of the work, and not being able to spend quality time on the task that they love.

• The positive here being you can do what you love doing, no more pressures, no more reporting, no more bosses, no more petty boring tasks, that’s the beauty of becoming an entrepreneur!

More working weekends and holidays. Similar to the first point, since an entrepreneur will need to sacrifice his time, so will they have to sacrifice also their weekends and holidays. Building a startup is really like raising a child, initially it will demand all the possible attention on this earth!

• The positive side here being you can get recognition in all walks of life and get the opportunity to be your own boss and follow your dreams, passion and work with total freedom like never before!

Cash Crunch. Few startups grow exponentially like the Facebooks and Twitters, such exponential growth is normally only seen in the IT World. In a normal brick and mortar startup, it’s a lot of struggle and patience to reach to the top and normally this comes with its fair share of cash crunch situations and basically cash sacrifices which an entrepreneur has to make, out of their own pockets.

• The biggest reward here being is having an equal probability to make the next killer solution like Facebook or Twitter. Also you can work on and follow more than one idea and business. Freedom to partner with other entrepreneurs, get their support and work with total freedom!

Last but not the least, starting up is like a double-edged sword or two sides of the same coin. It can be positive or negative, however, will like to add a quote which will give all entrepreneurs an instant adrenalin push which was coined by a student in class:

“Entrepreneurship is living a few years of your life like most people wont, so that you can spend the rest of your life like most people cant”

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Tags: entrepreneurs, rewards, sacrifices, startups

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 1st, 2011 at 8:44 pm and is filed under Business Education, How to invest in startups. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.