Motivations of a co-founder

Let’s discuss what motivated me to be the co-founder of a start-up during arguably the worst time to launch a technology start-up in the five (5) years:

1. my experience in e-commerce and technology over 20 years, including building teams, processes and technology across multiple companies;
2. my network of people who can help me, including a co-founder that I get along with extremely well;
3. I identified a $10B problem, which I understood very well because I had lived the problem myself;
4. I felt "bored" by the idea of another corporate job solving the same problems I've solved repeatedly;
5. a prior stint as CTO under an uninspiring CEO convinced me I could do his job better and wanted to prove it to myself;
6. learning new, difficult skill sets very much motivate me
7. I had the financial freedom to do so

The first three (3) motivators you can summarize as "I have the right experience, the right group of people, and a $10B problem I understand very well". The next two (2) you can summarize as "Life is too short and I want to do something new". And the last two (2) you can shorten to "I am a builder who has the freedom to take a chance to build".

Notice what is missing from this list? Money. If that is your motivation, I don’t think founding a startup-up is for you. Switching from Big Tech to co-founder reduced my compensation by 80%. Now, you do need money to live - so you’ll have to square that circle. Fortunately, my career has done well enough to provide sufficient financial flexibility to co-found a start-up. So, you need money but you don’t do it for the money. If you are successful - and the odds are against you - you can make lots of money but the expected value is likely less than the average salary at Amazon, Google, Facebook et al.

The strongest reasons for me were [4], [5] and [6]. I am sure many of you reading this feel the same way too often - underutilized, burned out from the same work day in day out, and hungry to do something more impactful. You feel you need to challenge yourself and do something beyond "make money". For me, that is solving real problems and learning new things. I like hard things as reflected in my personal motto "inveniam viam aut faciam", from Hannibal of Carthage's reply when told it was impossible to get elephants over the Alps during his invasion of the Roman Republic in 218 BC.

One other motivator was the "two-way" door concept I learned at Amazon. That is, most decisions are "two-way" doors that you can reverse by walking back through the door; very few decisions are "one-way" doors but we too often do not realize this. Co-founding a start-up is a two-way door decision because, if necessary, I could always go back to a corporate job because I have the experience and professional network to do so. And - even more importantly - co-founding a start-up and solving hard problems gain me professionally valuable skills. E.g., I have become much better at "selling" than I ever was; a skill-set you can use to sell yourself as much as anything else.