Startup Mentality

I was down the pub yesterday lunchtime having a cheeky pint and a tai curry when the conversation turned to startup companies. More specifically the kinds of people who are willing to take the risk and the potential rewards you can expect.

We all more or less agreed that all the people we knew who'd done this deserved the rewards they got considering the risks they took. We also agreed that none of us had the right mentality to do this and were quite happy with the job security of coming into a company after this stage.

Afterwards I got to thinking: in academic terms wasn't this exactly what I did all those years ago? I mean I sold up and spent the money getting a foothold on an academic career. Given the time I spent doing it I did well and made a bit of a splash before I decided to stop.

I've just never thought of myself as this sort of risk taker before (or while I was doing it for that matter) but then I suppose I didn't see it as a risk since when I started out on, what I shall henceforth term "The hair brained scheme", I had little more ambition than pass PhD and sail off into the sunset in a small yacht. Yes, really, that was it! (I will get round to this story in time)

I suppose it helps if you have few ties when you're contemplating your hair brained scheme but it's interesting to contemplate that I might have the Cambridge startup mentality after all.