[A Wantrepreneur's diary] - Hi!

Hi guys,

I am Phil, 26 from Germany. I studied computer science and have tried quite a few different business ideas. I want to begin sharing my story with all of its details with you.

So today is the first day and I try to update every day. As a child I always wanted to invent new things and I build many many useless appliances in my grandpa's workshop. I started my first real business as soon as I left home at 20. I sold T-Shirts or rather: I had a shop for selling T-Shirts. I sold less than 10. It was then that I discovered that founding needs a lot of devotion.

In university I had my very first real business deal and built a web application which controls an animal feeding machine. Countless hours went into this and I am very proud that my roommate and I finished this. It is in production in many farms today. We didn't get rich. The exact opposite is true: We received far to less money, but we were just stupid students and didn't know how much we could charge. It also was my first contact with depression. We would work our asses of sitting in the dorm each day until night and coding. It was a very good time which I appreciated so much. It was quality time with a good friend. However I quickly noticed one of the biggest pitfalls in entrepreneurship for me: The feeling of "when I don't work we won't get further". This lead to us living the very definition of "hustle porn". Working 10 hours a day was not seldom.

Fast-forward a bit and I left my student job with 5k EUR I saved. This would last me 5-6 months. I was doing my own new and innovative chat application. You could chat with all people in close proximity. We were in an incubator. I had a quite functioning team and then I myself made the mistake of ditching it in favour of another idea. To this very day I am sorry for this. However I don't think any of us were truly ready to commit to a business back then. My new idea was a multi-tenant hotel application for holiday accommodations. Like the little leaflets which hold all of the information that you can find in your hotel room. I had the plan to do consulting and analytics for the hotels to optimize their offers. To this very day I love the idea. Now this time my team mate ditched me in favour of going to study abroad. Somehow mentally I was not able to handle this and I let go of the project.

For a few years I only occasionally did projects. I asked myself if the hustle was worth it. I found (at least I thought) love and gave in to her pressure (red flag) to get a "normal job". I lost this job (senior project lead) for a new episode of depression in the beginning of this year. It was then that I met a good friend from university who I shared an office with back in the hotel app times. As it turned out I was very lucky.

Today I am part of the company this man owns and I love working with them. I have my own shares. We incubate our own ideas and I have my own company again. I discovered that I love founding and creating with others. I love to be par of a team with its ups and downs. I read the sentence "live is about the people you meet and what you create with them" and I love that very thing. It is so fulfilling. I finished some jobs in record time and the team is so proud and I am so proud to be part of that team. These are lovely people. Somehow everything is going so well right now. I also started another project with other people (I will tell you about this in one of the next posts). I know its such a little thing but when I enter the office we hug each other instead of shaking hands. Things like that mean a lot to me. So much empathy. I am a very happy person right now. I still do "hustle porn" in a sense that I work close to 12 hours a day sometimes. However I can take breaks, go for a hike with my family or meet my friend whenever I want. The fear of not getting further was replaced by a feeling of wanting to get further and work for it. I don't suffer anymore, I enjoy. Don't get me wrong there are still days where I have a hard time working. Motivation is a bitch they say, discipline is what matters. I can accept this today and still be happy. In this regard I have become much more stoic.

I am not sure if this is interesting for any of you, but it feels so good writing about it. I would appreciate your comments. How do you experience entrepreneurship? How did you start? What are the biggest obstacles that you very personally face?

Love, Phil

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