Tomorrow marks the beginning to a new stage for my path to entrepreneurship. From only working on external project for cash flow I will be switching back to working full time employment. It’s a shame this has to happen but I know this is not the end. After all, one of the most famous quote for start ups is

“Fail Early, Fail Fast, Fail Often”

My understanding is that it doesn’t matter if we fail as long as we learn from the experience, and I think I have.
One of the best lesson I have learnt is from the cool folks at Cocoon, a Hong Kong based startup coworking space. I have been working there for the past 6 months and it has been a great experience. I started going there because I didn’t like the isolation from working at home and I liked being able to share ideas with others. The magic of crashing ideas with other like minded souls is essential for the creative mind.
It took me a while to get used to sharing ideas with others. It’s not that I had a problem of fearing someone would take my idea, I was actually more worried about my idea being awful and I would get laughed at. That my idea would have no base and no one would get any use out of it. After speaking with several individuals I realised many entrepreneurs felt the same. That idea alone gave me so much confidence to explore and test different ideas. It’s a shame that came so late, but as they say, much better late then never. I do intent to carry on with pursuing my ideas.
When I stepped into the startup world I felt it made sense to who I am and how I perceive the world, being at Cocoon with so many energetic, innovating visionnaires helped me reinforced my own thinking. Although I am not choosing the easiest road, I am definitely not completely insane. Although I can firmly say the startup world is not filled with supportive and cool people, at least it’s not full of arrogant geniuses like I feared.
I would like to go back to Cocoon one day, but I trust it will be completely different, many of those I had the pleasure of sharing ideas with will be flying high, what a pleasure it was been knowing all these future millionaires and TED talk speakers.