What makes a startup special? What motivates somebody to get a startup going? Some of the possible motivations could include money, control, better work…

Control: If you thought your current boss is abusive and want to be a boss of yourself, then startup is a bad idea. Startup founders have the worst and the most abusive boss – the market. The market never sugar-coats and the brutal reality will be shown to you without waiting for your mid year review. VCs, Angels, customers, suppliers, partners will all discourage you, abuse you and criticize you – and the more you succeed the more the criticism. It is damn you do, damn you don’t.

Money: If you thought you were not making a good chunk in your corporate job and plan to make your money in a startup – kill that idea. A startup is a big money-losing game and years would pass before a startup founder could match the level he could earn at a corporate. And by that time he reaches that value, 90% of the startups would have gone kaput! If money alone is a motivation, startups would fail – because in the initial years most startups would see only red ink.

Better work: You thought your desk job is so demeaning and want to sit and draw broad strategies. You want to talk synergy, business strategy and stuff. Well, startup is a bad idea. A startup founder is everybody from a janitor to receptionist to call center handler. Here we don’t sit in glass rooms and just chalk out strategies in thin air. We code like crazy at nights, in the mornings we run like salesmen – after the investors – who just stay at the end “Good idea! Keep me posted” aka “You are not good enough to be funded now”, and we just keep fingers crossed waiting for the reviews of any customer – however small – who are using the product now. We worry about hiring talent and keeping the bills paid and making demos at the startup events.

So, why are we in this abusive game? It is because we all want to change the world. That is the obsession that carries us at days and nights. That is the obsession that make us take any task (however lowly it is) at our startup to keep the company running, take 90% paycuts from our corporate jobs and get abused by random people.

Is it really stupid for these many people trying to change the whole big darn world? I mean, you don’t have 10,000 people who could change the world at the same time. Yes it is! Any startup founder is stupid, obsessed and disillusioned – but a successful one combines these with smartness, grit, timing and an understanding of the market and we all think we are that one.