11–20 of 23 posts
Per a friend who overheard Steve Blank say this once: "If you have to ask or second guess, then you already have your answer. You're not ready." (paraphrasing)
I'm not familiar with Belgium, only the US, but why do you resent the way college teaches? There is some busywork and some BS up front, but if you suck it up, pay your dues and prove to your professors that you're good (I'm assuming you're good), then it quickly turns into not-BS, provided you're at a decent college.
As someone who's in a similar position (I did drop out of college, partly to build a company, but partly because it didn't make sense at the time): 1. Your idea sucks, so don't drop out of school to start it. You need to find a better idea. 2. See if you can take a leave of absence, and also see how long your credits are good for. For example, my uni's credits are good for 11 years; if I twiddled my thumbs for 10 yea…
If you have to ask a bunch of strangers on the Internet, the answer is probably "no". If you ever get to "fuck you, I don't give a damn about your lame, irrelevant opinion. I know what I'm doing and win, lose, or draw, this makes the most sense right here, right now", that's the time to do something "crazy" like that.
If you're so autodidactic, why are you studying CS in school? Maybe stay in and pick some other major that interests you and you can fall back on. Otherwise if you're doing CS just to learn to program, you can save a lot of money by just googling and doing your own things. Few people who hire you for that type of work will care anyway.
One thing I'd change: you location, Belgium seems to be nice, but you need lots of peers in physical distance. So change to a city with a vibrant tech community (Berlin).
As someone who's in a similar position (I did drop out of college, partly to build a company, but partly because it didn't make sense at the time): 1. Your idea sucks, so don't drop out of school to start it. You need to find a better idea. 2. See if you can take a leave of absence, and also see how long your credits are good for. For example, my uni's credits are good for 11 years; if I twiddled my thumbs for 10 yea…
A better response would be, "I think the e-commerce space is really crowded, so be sure your idea can differentiate and provide more value than other existing options."
Per a friend who overheard Steve Blank say this once: "If you have to ask or second guess, then you already have your answer. You're not ready." (paraphrasing)
There's nothing wrong with having doubts. I feel it's actually immature starting a company without considering all the options. You're just being delusional then.
That said, I personally don't think there should be any doubts. It's like working with a cofounder. There are a lot of things to consider, potential issues that may arise, but regardless of what happens, doubts should not arise between you two. In the same sense, you carefully weigh your options and only YOU know yourself best. If you have doubts, you aren't ready because jumping on an idea to pursue it full force can take a lot out of you.
You're free to disagree but calling the advice of a long time and successful entrepreneur that many people respect and admire immature is an insult. To which I say believe what you want.
As someone who's in a similar position (I did drop out of college, partly to build a company, but partly because it didn't make sense at the time): 1. Your idea sucks, so don't drop out of school to start it. You need to find a better idea. 2. See if you can take a leave of absence, and also see how long your credits are good for. For example, my uni's credits are good for 11 years; if I twiddled my thumbs for 10 yea…
Really appreciate your input, but your statement about my idea is rather brusque. You don't have a clue what my idea is about. It is possible to take a leave of absence at my university, which I'm considering. I might even go to night school getting a bachelor's degree while working on my startup during the day.
Business isn't easy; you'll need every advantage you can get. My advice (and what I'm personally doing, after being in almost the same situation as you) is to build a smaller business first, specifically something that does not require a network effect to be useful. In other words, a product that is useful to a single customer without any other users. See stuff by 37signals and most SaaSs in general for examples.
The end point is really that business is hard, and it's infinitely harder when you go after something huge like eBay on your first try. That's not being bold, it's being foolish.
Why not build something smaller to learn more about business, make a good bit of money from that, and then take on eBay? It is quite a bit easier to build a 100k/year company than a 100million/year company. Plus, you'll have money to bootstrap your company.