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“It’s a mug’s game, then?” Dave, one of the hosts of the podcast Jeroen, my co-founder and VP Engineering, and I were being interviewed on, said to us.
I had just finished telling him that the odds of raising funding for a startup are around one in one hundred. So, Dave was rightfully asking me if starting a company was worth it.
“I love what I’m doing,” I said. “And, if I didn’t love what I’m doing, there would be no amount of money that would make it worth it.”
There are a lot safer ways to make lots of money than building a startup.
Yeah, if your startup hits unicorn status, then you’ll make more money than doing anything else. However, the odds are decidedly against your startup making it past year five, let alone becoming a unicorn.
So, if your goal is becoming financially independent, the safest way to achieve this is working your way up the corporate ladder. Yeah, you might not make it billionaire status, but you can become a millionaire many times over choosing this route.
You have to be really fanatical about what you’re doing to be a startup CEO.
“So, you guys are doing it for the love, then?” Dave asked us.