It affects what you do next, and the way you tackle everything from jobs to relationships, probably for the rest of your life.
When I left the company I started, I intended to start another one almost immediately. But then I didn't. Partially this was because of assorted conceptual and administrative issues, but partially it was because I realized how burned out I was. I'd been living this thing for five years, breathing life into it as part of a very small team, starting with literally no budget. Business is hard, and it was often soul-destroying - I discovered that other people were considerably more cut-throat than I was willing to be, and consistently underestimated how low people could go. And on top of the business itself, I was up to my eyeballs in code most of the time. Over time, I lost perspective. Within a space of a couple of months, though, two immediate family members were told they were seriously ill, and my sister became long-term disabled, and I was snapped back to reality.
It wasn't that entrepreneurship wasn't for me, as such, I don't think. It was that the specific kind of entrepreneurship I was living didn't fit my hopes or goals, and was eclipsing everything else in my life in a very negative way. I didn't think I could fit the care-giving that would potentially be required with the demands of the job. They're still going strong, but I wanted to live a different kind of life, closer to what Tony Stubblebine writes about on his blog. (Tony's the smartest guy I know on the topic.) That was always my intention, but we diverged.
It's certainly positively affected my career. Since leaving, I've spoken at Harvard, been published by IBM and have worked in a bunch of really interesting situations, with fantastic people, on a consultancy basis. Before the startup, I was a ground-level developer, so that's a win. But I'll certainly start a company again, at some point, if only because I'm the kind of person who loves to make things, and to do things on my own terms.
I'd ask yourself carefully if it's entrepreneurship that's not for you, or the situations you've been in.
(By the way, my family's health situation is vastly improved - but I think the thought experiment of what would happen if you needed to be a care-giver is a good one.)
When I left the company I started, I intended to start another one almost immediately. But then I didn't. Partially this was because of assorted conceptual and administrative issues, but partially it was because I realized how burned out I was. I'd been living this thing for five years, breathing life into it as part of a very small team, starting with literally no budget. Business is hard, and it was often soul-destroying - I discovered that other people were considerably more cut-throat than I was willing to be, and consistently underestimated how low people could go. And on top of the business itself, I was up to my eyeballs in code most of the time. Over time, I lost perspective. Within a space of a couple of months, though, two immediate family members were told they were seriously ill, and my sister became long-term disabled, and I was snapped back to reality.
It wasn't that entrepreneurship wasn't for me, as such, I don't think. It was that the specific kind of entrepreneurship I was living didn't fit my hopes or goals, and was eclipsing everything else in my life in a very negative way. I didn't think I could fit the care-giving that would potentially be required with the demands of the job. They're still going strong, but I wanted to live a different kind of life, closer to what Tony Stubblebine writes about on his blog. (Tony's the smartest guy I know on the topic.) That was always my intention, but we diverged.
It's certainly positively affected my career. Since leaving, I've spoken at Harvard, been published by IBM and have worked in a bunch of really interesting situations, with fantastic people, on a consultancy basis. Before the startup, I was a ground-level developer, so that's a win. But I'll certainly start a company again, at some point, if only because I'm the kind of person who loves to make things, and to do things on my own terms.
I'd ask yourself carefully if it's entrepreneurship that's not for you, or the situations you've been in.
(By the way, my family's health situation is vastly improved - but I think the thought experiment of what would happen if you needed to be a care-giver is a good one.)