Successfully Making the Jump From Employee to Entrepreneur

My transition from employee to business owner has turned out very well, but the path wasn't always so clear. While working toward my law degree, I clocked time as a legal intern. I quickly discerned I wasn’t quite cut out for the 9-to-5 lifestyle. It meant getting up early, rushing my prayers and rituals, and making a 9 a.m. court start every day. To put it mildly, it was a horror.

I began my first foray into entrepreneurship during this period. It led to an epic failure and a whole lot of debt. I got out of my depression after reading the story of Urbanladder, a furniture company started by Ashish Goel and Rajiv Srivatsa. The two had found themselves in a situation similar to mine and were dissatisfied with their jobs -- one at McKinsey & Company and the other at Yahoo.

It was only much later that I was able to define the actions that would make my leap of faith a success. I share them here in the hopes they can help others who are looking for more meaning in their career.

3 Reasons Tech Startups Fall Into a Death Spiral

In a tech startup you can reach a point where your efforts bring diminishing returns. For all the hard work you put in, your customers just won’t bite. That leads to a death spiral, which is worse than failure.
You can jinx your startup in a thousand different ways. But the following three lie at the core of many others.