En Route to Saenthood: #1 Ready or Not?
This series is about what I’m learning, observing and experiencing while building my startup Saent (pronounce “Saint”). The good, the bad and especially the ugly, each time in under 500 words.
The team-wall at the Happylatte office, the mobile gaming company I was working. Until I got fired.
I lost my job. Got fired along with 90% of the company, which, in an ironic way, made it more bearable. Not that I was very upset anyway.
As by some miracle, I had just adopted the Stoic mindset, after reading Ryan Holiday’s The Obstacle is the Way, two weeks before the big bang. What better way to test your newly-learned Stoicism, than getting fired?
“In life, it doesn’t matter what happens to you or where you came from. It matters what you do with what happens and what you’ve been given.” — Ryan Holiday in “The Obstacle is The Way”.
Stoicism and savings, those things saved me in August of last year.
For the first time in my life, I hadn’t spent and lived like a wannabe rockstar. Not that it gave me a lot of runway, but at least it gave me some time to think, which I did.
My previous entrepreneurial failures were still fresh. I left The Struggle only ten months prior. Was I ready to step back in?
Collecting a decent paycheque every month is definitely nice. Going from a meagre $1,000 a month, to $6,000 as a salaried employee, was not an unpleasant experience at all.
With that money on my mind, a steady job seemed to be the wiser choice.
So what job did I want? I definitely didn’t want to stay in gaming. And I sure as hell was not going back into music and video production. What I did want was work for Evernote. In fact, that’s about the only company I could come up with where I truly wanted to work.
Why Evernote? I’ve been passionate about productivity for most of my working life, and love their product and the brand they’re building.
Unfortunately, I had very little to show for my passion. Even though anyone who has worked with me would confirm I’m one of the most organised and productive people they know, there was no proof of that on my CV. No side-projects, no training, no related jobs, nada.
Of course, I applied nevertheless. But it was a long shot anyway. A Dutchman, living in Beijing, applying for a well sought after job, at one of the few Unicorns in San Francisco.
I never heard back.
Which brought me to the original question: look for a random safe and salaried job? Or follow my passion and dive right back into The Struggle?
I think you know which one I picked.
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