We have received many questions and comments after we announced that we wanted to start our own company. Now that we are starting the activities we wanted to summarize some of those questions and our own thinking.
How do you dare you become entrepreneurs? Isn’t that risky?
Taking control of your own future and employment is naturally risky business. Unless you really have customers and perform billable work there is no money coming in, but normally there is some money going out, at least on personal level. There is no guarantee of success, even if you try hard and believe that you have what it should take. Then again, as Wayne Gretzky put it “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” We feel comfortable with the risk and will do our best to succeed.
You need to have some courage to make the final move. Ultimately it was still not that hard. You need to dare to leave something behind in order to start something new. Jorma already made a pretty courageous move when he left from a senior legal position in Nokia legal and joined Blyk, a start up company in early 2008. Leea has made some courageous moves in her past as well. She left legal business and studied aesthetics and arts and then re-joined legal business again after few years. She also quit het job and moved to Singapore with Jorma’s work and studied a legal degree in Singapore and worked at a big international law firm there. It is as Christopher Columbus put it “You can never cross the ocean until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore.” Well, we are sailing again, finally.
Is this a good time to become an entrepreneur? Why now? Why not now?
There is no best time or maybe best time is always. Chinese proverb puts it all quite nicely “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.” There is some truth in it although twenty years ago Jorma had just started extremely interesting challenges with Nokia and Leea had a very interesting job with Nordea. Even if we could have started our own company earlier we would not like to give up the roles, tasks, learning and different working environments that we have been lucky to experience in the past 20 years. We would definitely not give up the four and half years in Singapore. All the experiences gained and the new dynamics in the (Finnish) legal market gave us the boost. We feel that the best time to start our own company and business is now!
What if you fail?
What if we succeed? Bill Cosby put it nicely “In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure.” this is definitely the case with us. We are also prepared to face the challenges that will lay ahead. It is up to us to make this happen. We cannot blame anybody else if we fail.
This is our dream
We are feeling great, and it seems to get better all the time. Naturally, we have made calculations and plans but ultimately this kind of decision is a gut feeling decision. Not doing this would be something that we could regret. It is good to get going and building our dream company. Farrah Gray once said “Build your own dreams, or someone else will hire you to build theirs.” During the next few months we will continue to work on our dreams and the company’s longer term plans. It will be interesting to see where this move will take us in the coming years.
Big thanks to friends
Warmest thanks for all the encouragement, feedback and support you have given. We have received so many positive messages, advise and comments. We are grateful for your support.
Leea and Jorma