Sophomore year of college is coming to a close and it’s time to decide what exactly I want to do with my upcoming summer. This past year of college has been exciting, nerve-wracking, stressful, but very fulfilling. However, now that it’s over, I need to decide if I want to continue on with PrintIt or not. For me, it’s more of a gut decision rather than logical, but I still decided to run my feelings through a variety of considerations.
My last blog post spoke on the importance of having the passion when it comes to starting a company, so I was wondering if I am passionate enough? Honestly, no, I don’t think I am passionate enough about the construction industry to really stick with this idea. However, I do believe that I have the interest and passion for being an entrepreneur and exploring these kinds of ideas. I really don’t believe that you have to be an expert in an industry to excel, entrepreneurship has taught me that you can become an expert in a given industry in only 80 days if you commit to knowing what you’re pitching.
When it comes to risk tolerance, I think I find myself in the perfect situation. I think college is a great time to go off and start something like this. Not only because I have something to fall back on, but because the risk is minimized because of the resources I have at hand. I can’t thank the GCC professors enough for all the help and support they’ve given me this past semester through venture lab.
Although I might not be the best at making big or small decisions sometimes, I can say with complete confidence that I am willing to take on this kind of responsibility this summer. I think that GCC has prepared me to work well in the incubator environment because of the work I have done with Venture Lab. If I am only focusing on PrintIt (and a few other side projects) over the summer, I’ll be able to dedicate myself to the demo project and work really hard at it.
To burnout or not? That is one of my biggest considerations. It happens to so many entrepreneurs and it really is difficult to tell whether it will happen or not so early in this process. The only thing I can say at this point is that I plan to work very hard on this project this summer, this is definitely a “green light”.