You’re an engineer who just quit their job at a mid to late stage tech company and are thinking of what to do next. You’ve seen the company you spent the last ~4 years at grow from 100s of people to X000s of people and are excited about working again at a smaller company - but you’re really bullish about starting your own.

From seeing friends go through founding a company, you know how hard it will be. But you’ve always had this urge to at least try starting a company and you’ve never shied away from a challenge - in fact, you crave it. After working on slow moving projects that you felt like you had no control over, you want to work on something where you’re calling all the shots.

Worst case, you’ll explore for six months max and if nothing works out, you’ll go work somewhere. But really, you’re optimistic and dont think it’ll take more than a month or two before you’ve figured it all out.

It’s now month four and you still can’t bring yourself to commit to an idea. You’ve spent weeks brainstorming with potential cofounders but every idea you put through the maze has some flaw that prevents you from loving it. Then you hear about a company whose product is literally the same idea you thought of five weeks ago. They just raised a $5M seed round. Did they not see the flaws you saw? Are you just overly pessimistic?

You start thinking that maybe the startup journey isn’t for you. You suddenly start feeling anxious about market sentiment, layoffs, and hiring freezes. Maybe you should cut those six months short?

Great things don’t happen overnight or even in a couple months though. Spending enough time exploring is necessary - the right idea will take a while to come to you. You remember that uncertainty is part of the startup journey, it is the one constant you can rely on always being there. Learning to embrace it is key.