What I Wish I Knew Before Becoming An Entrepreneur
Forewarned is forearmed
18 months ago, I decided to start my own business. Why not? I had a great idea for a tool the market was crying out for, and a technical co-founder to build it. Having worked in the startup world for a few years, I also thought I had a pretty good idea of what I was getting myself into.
I look back and chuckle.
No one decides to be an entrepreneur because it’s easy — but if you play your cards right, it easily trumps working for someone else. You can work with your passions and values, reap a more direct reward from your labour, and forge a path on your own terms. It’s a lifestyle that draws you in with promises of money, power, freedom and changing the world.
But until you get there, a founder’s life is largely sleepless nights, hours spent crafting a LinkedIn profile to outshine all others, and a mocking lack of paycheck every month. This I anticipated, but it turns out I had a lot to learn.
As they say, to be forewarned is to be forearmed, so here are the 10 things no one ever tells you about being an entrepreneur:
1. Lack of diversity is a bigger problem than you’d think
With its reputation for being innovative, future-focussed, and more people-centric than the traditional corporate world, you might think the startup space would be an inclusive one.
Think again, especially if you’re looking for investment. Unfortunately, the venture capital scene is embarrassingly backward in terms of diversity, and women and ethnic minorities are shockingly underrepresented among investment decision-makers. Perhaps unsurprisingly, for every £1 of VC investment in the UK, 89p goes to all-male founding teams. Only 10p goes to mixed-gender teams, and less than 1p goes to all-female teams — despite the fact that one third of entrepreneurs are women. Similarly, only around 13% of ethnic minority-led businesses are able to secure VC or Angel funding.
Things are improving, but there’s still a distinctly male, pale, and stale atmosphere.
2. It’s an incredibly lonely experience
Loneliness is a huge problem for entrepreneurs, especially for early-stage founders who have no (or very few) colleagues to turn to for camaraderie and collaboration. I had expected this to some extent, but wasn’t prepared for just how alone and vulnerable I would feel.
Like many entrepreneurs, I found myself working from home to cut costs, meaning I had no sense of a workplace community. I also ended up working extra long, unsociable hours trying to get things off the ground, isolating myself from my normal social connections.
But here’s where you really start to feel the loneliness: unlike being part of a larger organisation, the buck stops entirely with you. You alone are responsible for finding the answers (and knowing the right questions in the first place). If you don’t make things happen, there’s no safety net to fall back on.
No pressure.
One of the smartest things you can do is join a community for entrepreneurs, such as an accelerator program, or local or online group. This is a great place to find support and connection, and a useful resource for information and feedback.
3. Starting a business can take a heavy toll on your mental and physical health
It’s more than just a bit of stress. According to the Entrepreneur Pressure & Wellbeing Report by weare3Sixty, 77% of founders say that running a business has affected their mental health, and 70% say it has affected their physical health, too. According to the study, founders are 5.5 times lonelier than the UK average, and three times more likely to suffer from depression and anxiety. 56% reported experiencing exhaustion or burnout at some point on their entrepreneurial journey, with financial risk and weight of decision making highlighted among the biggest contributing factors.
Don’t let this information put you off completely (what job is stress-free?). Instead, use it to make wellbeing and self-care a priority, and avoid becoming another statistic.
4. It’s an ‘always on’ lifestyle
With a traditional job, you can clock out at the end of the day and leave your work behind you — more or less. If you can get away with ignoring that annoying colleague that emails you at 9pm on a Friday night, your evenings and weekends are yours to enjoy.
As an entrepreneur, switching off isn’t as straightforward. Unlike an employee at a company, you are your business; when you stop, the whole operation stops, too. To add more pressure, every conversation you have is a potential sales pitch, making it difficult to have honest, relaxed conversations with anyone who could be a potential client or stakeholder. Vulnerability, stress, and worry are cards you have to play close to your chest, as misguided disclosures could errode confidence in what you’re doing, and come back to bite you further down the line.
5. Everyone has an opinion
The life of an entrepreneur is not unlike that of the Greek goddess Cassandra, blessed with the ability to see the future, but cursed that no one would ever believe her. As a founder, you are expected to know everything about your industry, foresee future trends, and produce business plans to withstand the highest degrees of scrutiny — but that won’t stop the almost daily influx of unsolicited advice and second-guessing you’ll receive. Especially from those who have no idea what they’re talking about.
Are you an expert in your field? Have you spent years gathering the knowledge and experience needed to build this business? Doesn’t matter. Your neighbour, your brother, the 21-year old investment associate who spent 3 minutes looking at your pitch deck — they’ll all know better.
(Don’t worry, you get used to it.)
6. Beware the cult of venture capital
Every industry has their Gods — the gatekeepers to success, whose judgements can potentially make or break you. In the startup world, this honour is bestowed upon the venture capitalists who have the ability to grant an entrepreneur’s most precious resource: investment.
When you are an entrepreneur, very quickly everything you do becomes about securing investment — and then about pleasing and appeasing your investors. Despite the fact that people have been running successful businesses without venture capital since the dawn of man, current startup culture pushes the importance of VC above all else. Is it the only way for a business to succeed? No. Is it suited to every type of business? No. Can it push you in the wrong direction, sink your business, and leave you with nothing? Oh, most definitely. VC backing has the potential to be a game changer, but it far from guarantees success.
In any case, whatever you want to do, be prepared for the fact that VC will be pushed down your throat at every turning point. Bootstrapping is dead. Long live the venture capitalists.
7. Statistically speaking, you will fail
Even if you manage to navigate all of the above, the odds are truly stacked against you as an entrepreneur. Unfortunately, a staggering 90% of startups fail — including 75% of those who manage to secure venture capital funding. Reasons for failure vary, but common reasons are premature scaling, lack of product-market-fit, and not having the right people on board.
That’s not to say you shouldn’t try, but proceed with caution. De-risk as much as possible, and know your market inside out. Some level of failure is inevitable, but the trick is to fail fast, dust yourself off, and move forward armed with what you’ve learned.
8. Most of us are insecure, and are making it up as we go along
Recent studies have revealed that 84% of entrepreneurs and small business owners experience imposter syndrome, a feeling that you lack the skills and knowledge to be doing what you’re doing. I’ve certainly spent a good chunk of time worrying about being “found out”, but it’s reassuring to know that even very successful entrepreneurs feel the same way — imposter syndrome is really just part of being human.
You may also be under the impression that in order to be a successful entrepreneur you need to be an MBA-holding jack-of-all-trades with decades of top-tier professional experience. That possibly helps, but the majority of us are just ordinary people, working things out by trial and error (read: very few of us really know what we’re doing).
Most people start a business armed with an idea, some industry knowledge, and a marketable skill — if they’re lucky. Along the journey of starting a business, even someone with the most impressive CV will inevitably stumble upon things they’ve never even thought about before (like term sheets, founder agreements, or business insurance). And it’s no big deal, they’ll pick it up on the fly like the rest of us.
Armed with Google, there’s nothing you can’t do.
9. You can get pretty far on a limited budget
You don’t always need a lot of money or technical expertise to get a business going. In fact, 99% percent of the time, you can develop an MVP (minimum viable product: a basic version of your business designed to validate assumptions and demand) for virtually no cost. Often this need only be a website with a sign-up form, and thanks to platforms like Wix and Squarespace, it’s never been easier to create a high-quality landing page with no coding or design experience. Even creating an app prototype can be done without technical knowledge thanks to no code/low code tools like Builder.ai and Bubble.
So much of what you need to grow your company can be found online, for free. Stylish posters and social media assets? Try Canva. Legal templates and investment documents? Try Rocket Lawyer or Seedlegals.
For other business services (copywriting, logo design, SEO, web dev, accounting, customer service, and more), check out sites like Fiverr and Upwork, which provide access to a global network of freelancers with very affordable rates.
All of this information was eye-opening to me. Don’t let lack of capital stop you from at least testing the waters.
10. It’s a generous community
Arguably the two most value resources to an entrepreneur are (good) advice and introductions to people who can help you. The best place to seek these out? Fellow entrepreneurs who have been on the same journey — another reason to join an entrepreneurial community! Starting a business is a tricky road to walk, so it’s a wise decision to get some insight from people further ahead who know the hazards and shortcuts. In my experience, they’re normally more than willing to help, if they can. In the past year, I’ve had invaluable leads from fellow founders for (free!) legal advice and IP advisement, pitching tips, and introductions to exited entrepreneurs in my field.
Entrepreneurs at the same stage (or just ahead of you) are an excellent, easily-accessible resource, but don’t be put off reaching out to more established, later-stage entrepreneurs. Most people remember the struggles of starting out, and more often than not will make time to speak with you if you send them a genuine message asking for advice. I’ve been shocked by the number of high-profile individuals who have been happy to chat with me, and gone out of their way to make further introductions.
Looking back to the beginning of my journey as a founder, this information would have saved me a lot of worry and confusion — and probably a fair amount of time and money, too. More than anything else, I would have known not to read everything as a sign of my own personal weakness (failure, difficulty securing funding, overwhelming stress, and loneliness). I would have made community and self-care higher priorities, earlier on.
Armed with the knowledge that difficulty, self-doubt, and unwanted opinions are just part of the course, confidence wouldn’t have evaded me for as long.
Whether you’re chasing unicorns and IPOs, or simply running a small business of your own, entrepreneurship is certainly a wild ride. Now that you’ve had a peek behind the curtain, is it something you’d like to try? Or perhaps the standard 9–5 isn’t looking so bad after all.
