Entrepreneurship - how to hone the mindset
I've worked at FANG and am again headed to FANGU. I've worked on my system design skills in the past two years with a lot of focus and found that it has been very effective. I want to focus on developing entrepreneurial skills/mindset over the next two years. Please advise. To give you an idea of where I stand today : - My sole picture of an entrepreneur is one who can start with an idea and build a successful company - I have FB and Uber offers that expire this week. Both for about FB lvl 5 equivalent SWE positions. - I have helped my teams perform better by actively getting involved in the projects outside of my specific responsibility. But I think this is not enough. Maybe I should help with projects that have a broader impact across the org. Not sure how I go about finding these and then getting involved. My technical skills and helpful nature do aid me a bit, but I need to get better at project selection. Anyone from FB or Uber, willing to help me figure out the details of how this can be done? - I do not have any ideas that I'm actively looking to build into companies, but I think it's because I do not understand what the journey looks like. I'm sure that 90% of us have thought of the ideas behind FAANGU(TY) products and dismissed them after some evaluation. We are smart, we just lack the entrepreneurial mindset. Well, help me figure out a way to hone it while I work at F or U.
🎄fiddy < TC < 👌🏾
If you need someone to teach you how to be an entrepreneur, then you can’t be an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs don’t get told what is the right thing to do, they wake up in the morning and they do. It’s as simple as that.
Noob.
Enterpenurial mindset is simple. Find a need and experiment with solutions. Do not build it unless it is validated. As engineers we are too biased towards building rather than exploring if people need what we plan to build. Uber and Lyft experimented with a crazy idea to share ride with strangers. Airbnb pushed it up a notch and experimented with sharing your house. Pinterest tried a simole idea that people like collecting things for memories and what is better than images you find around. Facebook experimented with people sharing their life with strangers on line . Snapchat experimented with the spooky human nature to tease. Amazon experimented with selling a commodity online to see if people would like delayed gratification of reading a book a week late. Instacart experimented with our willingness to skip grocery lines and to trust strangers picking up the food we eat. All these ideas are crazy and most experienced engineers would have dismissed these ideas without experimenting. Sometimes to be enterpenurial you have to be bit crazy and shameless to relentlessly try. I would recommend reading "founders dilemma", " innovators dilemma " and "hooked"
Thanks! Great advice. On to some fun reading now! This article, that I found based on your book suggestions, itself is pretty good read too - https://hbr.org/2008/02/the-founders-dilemma
They solved a transparency problem for their users.
Disciplined Entrepreneurship is also a great read.
PM me. Let’s chat and figure out new things we can build
👍🏼