Sometimes periods in life take surprising turns. 2.5 Years ago I never thought I would be where I am today. This is a new chapter for my family and me, here’s what happened
A little over 2.5 years ago I finished my MBA at IESE Business School in Barcelona. After the MBA I chose the unconventional path of starting a company: Treeveo. It was an experience like no other. I learned so much about so many things and met countless amazing people.
Leaving the old
I’ve already written about my learnings as an entrepreneur in several posts on my blog:
- First Year Failures of an Entrepreneur: #1 Never Stop Selling
- First Year Failures of an Entrepreneur: #2 Be Careful What you Build For
- First Year Failures of an Entrepreneur: #3 – Getting your story straight
My main lesson is that when you think about starting a company. It should always be based on a very clear problem that you are solving. In our case we started with trying to solve the problem of managing large projects, we then moved to leading projects and we ended with the problem of reducing costs for operations. However, even though I feel like we were on to something, we weren’t able to ramp-up quickly enough so we decided to close…
The day we took the decision to close Treeveo was absolutely devastating. I knew that the statistics were against us (92% of start-ups fail in the first 3 years). But when we started Treeveo, we were absolutely convinced of our product and proposition. 2.5 years ago I never believed that I would now be closing a start-up. I believed we would be building an international software company changing the world.
When I started Treeveo 2.5 Years ago I believed that the only way to have success and happiness would be to build a company and either hire 10s or 100s of people. Or to get an investment round of millions of euros and open offices all of the world. However, the last years have taught me something different: happiness is in your everyday work. You don’t know where today will lead you in 2.5 years. I learned that you should be doing something that makes you love that it is Monday today.
Something new
During the last years I learned that success and happiness don’t always come with an outcome that you can foresee. Today I start a new job as Product Manager in Google in the Zurich office. The work I will do will (hopefully) impact millions of people and I have been enjoying every second of it. If you would have told me 2.5 years ago that I would be starting for Google today… in Zurich, I would never have believed you.
Thanks
I am incredibly grateful for everyone who supported Treeveo, my family and me personally over the last 2.5 years. I thank our investors, that made the journey possible. I thank the team that worked so hard and put together such an amazing product. I thank our clients for trusting in us. I thank all my friends from IESE, ICBspain and other places for backing us. And of course, I thank my wife and my family for believing with me and supporting me all through the end.
Stop and Think 😉
Now just stop and think for a moment. What are you doing today? tomorrow? Realize that you don’t know where you will be 2.5 years from now. So make sure that you love what you are doing. Because today might lead to a surprising tomorrow 😉