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How many people are willing to give up their day job to risk a startup?

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Re: How many people are willing to give up their day job to risk a startup?

#11
post #8

Maybe I have been extremely lucky my whole life, but I have never thought of a startup as being risky. Financial risk is all about investing your personal human capital and looking for the highest expected value. When I approached the end of college, I looked at what I was given (mediocre programming skills, some street smarts, a knack for bs) and I realized that my expected financial return was much higher in a star…

Could you clarify how you arrived at the numbers for the five year expected return?

Just come up with expected exits if you were to start a startup then come up with percentages as to which you think those exits are reasonable.

The numbers I came up with were largely based on my personal feeling of how good I am at this whole being a business-man business, this is different for everyone.

Re: How many people are willing to give up their day job to risk a startup?

#12
I resigned from my 8 year career at a large financial software firm to work on my start-up full time this past January. It is definitely a risk and most people who work in a large stable corporation won't make that move. They thought I was insane to leave a stable high paying job for a risky and unknown venture. I don't know if I'll succeed yet, but I'm sure it was the right move for me. But there is a company full of people I left who will never make that kind of leap.
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