Two years after “The Jump”

It has been 2 years now since I decided to leave my stable, safe and well paid job in a big company to venture onto the entrepreneurship world. This transition is usually called “The Jump”, which I find very appropriate given the emotion and uncertainty around it.

I spent the first year establishing and operating a small business, a school to teach code and robotics for kids, nowadays I have partners in charge of the day to day operation. On the second year I became Head of Sales on a startup focused on artificial intelligence which had just been invested by a venture capital fund, this is my current job. I’d like to share some reflections on what I’m experiencing on this journey.

1. IT IS HARD WORK. I believed that after leaving big corporate somehow I would work less or have an “easier” professional life. It is not quite like this. When I was operating the code schools I had to open the door early in the morning, lock it late in the evening, and do a little bit of everything in between. I did that Monday to Saturday for the whole year, including holidays, no vacation. Now as startup Head of Sales I’m out of town travelling 4 days a week, every week, prospecting new customers. The hope to work less is seldom a good reason for transition to a new job, especially in the case of “The Jump”. Lesson learned. Good news is that I’m loving the experience and learning much more than I could ever imagine, which means working hard is not actually a problem.
2. MY TIME AT WORK IS 100% WELL SPENT. In spite of working a lot, and sometimes doing operational and less strategic tasks, everything I do is relevant, useful and adds value to the business! I used to be really annoyed on big companies with “Dilbert moments” like doing countless reviews on a slide presentation that probably would not even be presented in preparation for some upcoming big meeting with top executives. This is part of the past now, and I definitely don’t miss it!
3. IT TAKES TIME FOR THINGS TO WORK. When I opened my school I though in 6 months it would thrive, turn a great profit, we would start expanding, etc... not really... We reached break even very fast which is good, but after 2 years we are still working to grow the business and it will take at least 5 years to get where we want. And I realized this is actually a good history, once it is not unusual for small businesses to fail before the first anniversary, or to run a couple of years before get to break even. Similar story on the Head of Sales job, at first I thought that my 20 years of corporate experience combined with 1 year as an entrepreneur would turn into immediately sales results for the startup. Back to the real like, it took 6 months of hard work, trial and error, ups and downs, before we’ve been able to put together an efficient sales machine.
4. PRODUCTIVITY CAN BE AMAZINGLY HIGH ON SMALLER COMPANIES. I hadn't realized before that on a big company we are always “managing excess”, you simply have too much of everything. I mean, you may be asked to reduce your headcount of 100 people by 20%, still you will have 80 people to do the job, 80 people!! Imagine starting from scratch, now you need to “manage scarcity”, you create processes only on a needed basis (not because “We always did this way”), you modify process only based on what is working and what is not (not because of somebody else's influence or interests), you optimize to the limit using whatever contemporary tool is available (no lengthy and complex approval process needed). You do it because you can and it is fun, but also because there is no other way. The end result is productivity orders of magnitude higher than on some corporate elephants.
5. I OWN MY AGENDA. I had a great career at some S&P 500 companies, reaching a decent level on the organization, and still I was probably only on the top 5000 employees in terms of decision power. At my code school I’m the number 1, on the startup I’m number 2, this makes a HUGE difference. I still work hard as I said before, but I have A LOT of say on what, when and how I do things.
6. I CAN PAY MY BILLS. The personal financial side of “The Jump” for sure deserves an article of its own, but to make a long story short: today I make less than half of what I used to, for sure some adjustments were needed, but I still live in the same apartment, my daughters goes to the same school, we continue to often travel as a family and so on. This was my biggest concern before doing this transition, I still don’t have a definite answer on this front for the long term, but it is really not a relevant concern right now and the perspectives are very positive.

All in all it has been an amazing journey so far and I’m looking forward to the next 2 years!!