Risk is something that we live with everyday.
Its what excites us when we envision paradise on the other side of a 5$ lottery ticket.
Yet, its also what keeps us sitting at our desk, grinding away at our day jobs.
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What sets those risk takes apart?
I absolutely fell in love with computers.
So much that I didnt go back to India.
Risk comes in many forms as we all know.
Its rare you see success without risk taking.
I my experience its never the case.
Are You Willing To Take The Risk?
However, there is that 1% in the HubSpot study thattakes the risk to start a business.
These people are entrepreneurs.
They are startup founders.
What is this process like for people?
How do they reason about the risks?
That was in June of 2000.
I was leaving a very comfortable life behind me for the big unknown…
I feared not getting my comfort back at some point!
Its very hard to take risks when you have a lot, thats the main takeaway.
As we all know not everyone who takes a risk succeeds.
How Do You Overcome Fear?
Tim Ferrissonce saidin a TED talkyou should define your fears instead of your goals.
People often define their dreams and aspirations, while subconsciously letting their fears determine their decision to act.
Yet, some people are able to overcome this and push past the risk.
It takes a lot of maturity to actually know what your fears are and what your real goals are.
The goals I had at 28 were completely different than the ones I have today.
Goals are the reward we seek fear is the risk that can hold us back.
So how do you strike a balance between risk and reward?
I dont spend a lot of time setting goals or thinking about them.
Theres no magical goal that defines success for me after which Im done, Shah says.
I spend time thinking about priorities.
How will I spend my time?
What do I want to get better at?
There is nothing worse than setting a hairy goal, missing it and feeling depressed.
10 year goals are meaningless.
Its way too far in the future.
Always define goals that you genuinely believe you might achieve.
Ive set impossible goals in the past and it made me miserable.
Did you define your fears or goals?
Dharmesh:
I didnt have fears but I did have reservations.
I ran my first company (Pyramid Digital Solutions) for 10+ years.
They were tough, all-consuming years.
I assured my wife that I wasnt going to put us through that again.
When you decided to leave SunGuard to start Pyramid Digital Solutions, what fears did you have?
Did you define your fears or goals?
But I dont recall being that fearful.
There were a couple of reasons for that.
One, I grew up with modest means so had not developed an immodest lifestyle.
So, it didnt take that much to keep things going.
The nice thing about software companies is that it doesnt take that much capital to start them.
I defined neither my fears nor goals I wasnt that clueful.
You cant get there without hard work and chances are that you will face failure along the way.
The difference between success and failure is the ability to keep moving forward.
Everybody even the most successful ones, make a fair number of mistakes.
My advice: Recognize that you are not alone.
There will be dips.
There will be downturns.
You just have to fight through them.
In his spare time he documents his experiments on his blogCriminallyProlific.
