When I first created this blog 18 months ago, I randomly named it “On startups and life”. Turns out that although it sounds like two topics, I’ve started to find that they often blend together.

Startups/entrepreneurship is a great analogy for life. In general, we often define life by the challenges that we face. Hopefully, we face them head on, and figure out how to overcome them. When we don’t, we learn a lot, and strengthen ourselves for the next challenge.

Entrepreneurship and startups are the same way; especially early on. No matter what any early entrepreneur tells you (and possibly older ones also), they don’t know what the hell they are doing. If they did, they would succeed much faster, and with much more predictability than they are right now. Instead, we face our challenges head on and hope to tackle them. When we don’t, we learn a lot, and then hope that we have enough in the tank to keep moving on. Sometimes it means money. Sometimes it means emotional will and strength.

In the end, what matters is figuring out how to create an entity that has some kind of value in the world.

With life, the question is how do I create myself as a person of value? In entrepreneurship, it is how do I create something of value? The questions are almost one and the same. And so it helps me make sense of the blog.

As I think about (and write about) life and startups, I’m really just writing about life.

–

P.S. This is post number #44 in a 100 day blogging challenge. See you tomorrow!

Follow me on Twitter @alexshye.

Check out my current project Soulmix.