When is it time to put your startup dreams on hold?

One of my favorite quotes reads: “If you always wait for the perfect conditions, you will never get anything done”. I have always lived my life with these words at the back of my mind. I mean back in college I had no car or lots of cash to spend on lovely dates yet I didn’t say oh I am going to wait till I have all these things before I move in on the gorgeous lass I’ve had an eye for. It was even more evident in my footy game, I didn’t and still don’t believe in waiting till I am one on one with the goalkeeper before I strike at goal (thanks to Kaka, I know to do otherwise every now and then). But is this also the case with building a startup? Should you wait until all the pieces of the puzzle are available before pressing forward or should you just take the chance?

Unlike scoring goals and moving in on pretty girls, building a startup might require one to forget about that quote and be more pragmatic. In a game of footy, I am usually playing as a striker and my job is to do what Fernando Torres does for Liverpool…score goals! But I have 90mins to do that. If I miss a chance in the 5^th minutes, odds are that I get a few more to make amends, no? Same with girls, there’s quite a lot of lookers anyway, so one can move on to the next girl if the first one doesn’t work out. When it comes to building a startup however, if you get it wrong at the beginning or if you start with a few things missing, then your brand will be remembered for that. Your company will be associated with that for a long time and you can’t just dump your first start-up and move on to another and then another. That doesn’t look good on your resume when you start seeking funds from investors, VCs and so forth.

Generation- Y Startup has been doing quite well lately and I am glad. I typically measure its success based on how many people it connects me with and how many genuine relationships I have built from it. I get a lot of e-mails asking if this is my ‘start-up’ (writing about entrepreneurship, interviewing entrepreneurs and featuring successful gen y start-ups), but actually it’s not. This is only a blog I started 3 months ago to document my journey as I go about building a start-up from scratch. I started working on it some months back and initially it was only me, now I have brought 2 other awesome people on board. It is a great feeling knowing that you are pursuing your dream and it’s close to becoming real.

Lately however I have found that I am having to cut out aspects of the start-up (still in stealth mode) for several reasons. First I found that it will be difficult to do one important aspect of the start-up, so I cut it out. I said to myself “it’s not that big of a deal, it won’t affect the overall look of the business that much”. Before I knew it I was saying it for the 5^th thing I was cutting out. It was then I decided to take a step back and re-evaluate the situation. These changes and cuts have been done for several reasons and here are the top 3.

1.)    I am only 14months old as a college grad and so I am not exactly an experienced entrepreneur. I am still learning and I admit this all the time. I lack the experience and this shows up in my decision making on a few occasions. I imagine if things will be different if I worked at a start-up for a bit before coming back and pushing forth with my start-up especially since I am a sole-proprietor.

2.)    Funding sometimes is an issue. I believe in bootstrapping when starting things off, and I have done that all through even till now. I worked as an Engineer for my first year out of college and the money I saved up during the period has been used for that cause. I also currently consult for some companies and handle social media marketing for a few clients. That’s how I have funded my startup so far. I feel like with more money I will be able to bring more talent on board on top of what we already have and those things we couldn’t do and had to cut out might be done now. Would things be different if I take my foot off the gas pedal, take up more clients, save up a little more and acquire more skilled people?

3.)    There’s also the issue of time. I have quite a number of clients (that I must have to make sure funds are available for the start-up) and the work I have to do for them doesn’t leave me with a lot of time to work on the start-up. I imagine how great it will be financially, experience wise and in terms of building connections if I just put the start-up on hiatus for a while, take on more clients or a full-time/part-time job in the meantime.

While I am not particularly keen on putting things on hold right now, I can’t help but think it might be best for me and the start-up in the long run. The plan is to launch in October if things move as planned, but will it be worth it when it goes live? Will it be my dream come true? Makes me wonder, when is it time to put your start-up dreams on hold?