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There's Never A Perfect Time To Start A Company, So Start Today

POST WRITTEN BY
Rebecca Liebman
This article is more than 7 years old.

“If you wait until you’re ready, you’ll be waiting for the rest of your life.”

Early on in starting my company, people advised me that I should have more experience, more time, and more money. I didn’t.

When I started my company, LearnLux, I had no money, no time, no experience, had never worked in finance, and to top it off was entering one of the oldest, most conservative, male-dominated industries as a young woman. I had never been so compelled to do anything in my life.

At the time, I knew starting a company was hard. I knew it was even harder than I imagined, but I really had no idea just how hard it was. From the outside, startups look really glamorous, but on the inside, glamorous is the last word you would use.

Starting a company is difficult. I don’t think there’s even a word in the English language to describe it. The world says that something should be done a certain way and you’re pushing in the opposite direction, saying no, it can be done differently.

Sometimes we forget what we’re taking on. Every day might not be a giant victory that’s newsworthy. In fact, most days will be tough, stressful, and feel unconquerable. I remind my team that huge companies have spent hundreds of millions of dollars and decades trying to address this issue, and they haven’t done it; putting our progress into perspective. When you think about it like that, it feels like we’re moving mountains.

I don’t think it gets any easier. There’s always something to de-risk. The company a couple floors down from our office raised $50 million dollars, had two hundred employees and still shut down. And that’s just one example of thousands. But here’s the thing that I’ll tell you: There’s never a perfect time to start a company.

When I started my company, I wasn’t old enough to be in a bar. I was in college and had a challenge — I didn’t know what I getting into when I took on student loans, I didn’t have a credit card, therefore, no credit, and I was extremely confused about where to start when making financial decisions. After a quick prototype, I found that there were quite a few others that felt the same way. At the time, I didn’t realize how large this problem actually was and how ubiquitous it was among people — no matter who they were.

I had job offers when I graduated and while the salary and benefits were very appealing to my parents, I couldn’t stop thinking about this company.

Some people told me to take the job, learn some things, and if I still wanted to start something, I could do it later. That didn’t seem like an option to me. I thought the other way around — how could there ever be a better time to start a company? I don’t take for granted the freedom I have. Right now I have almost no responsibility to anyone else. I can make a decision and do it. If I have to fly across the country one day, I do and if I have to move to NYC for a couple months, I will. (I did.) I know amazing founders who have families — spouses and kids — and the decisions they make effect everyone. I don’t have that.

Being young has benefits — and I always have to remind myself of that when someone mistakes me for an intern or asks when I started working here.

But that only makes me want it more. I want to show that there is pattern recognition for young women being successful in financial technology.

So where does that leave us? Like I said at the top, no one will ever be ready. You can say that in a year you’ll have more money, more experience, more time, but you can make all of those excuses again, every year. There will never be a perfect time. Set, Go.