A lot of people think you’re either an entrepreneur or an employee, but whether you own your own company or work for one, you’re both. However, with the recent economy both state-side and in europe (greece,portugal,spain,iceland), some employee-minded people are finding it tough to get jobs.
Over here in Malaysia the job market seems to be picking up, but even then you never know what might happen. Starting up side projects that have little to do with your career path could be an answer to these problems, my wife use to run an online makeup retailer called simply-naturale.com. I’m starting up a new project called jomlunch, over at jomlunch.com. While these are all still new, I believe starting up projects is one of the best learning opportunities you’ll get.
Whatever project you’re doing, as long as there’s outside exposure (like a website or a facebook fan page), you’re likely to be picked up by a recruiter doing a job search. Take for example the following excerpt from an article from inc.com
Shapiro, Myers, and Haug launched their three-man business called Sparkbuy less than a year ago and they just agreed to sell it to Google. Sparkbuy is an online comparison shopping site. Don’t worry about remembering the name. You’ll likely never hear it again. Google has already shut down the business it just bought. It’s the three guys, Shapiro, Haug, and Myers, that are clearly what Google coveted. Such acquisitions are often referred to as “manquisitions”; buying a company just to raid the talent.
You can read the full article here. It turns out google were interested in the people, so they bought the business. It’s a shrewd strategy, but I wonder how those guys feel about going from entrepreneur back to employee. Only time can tell.
For now there is an announcement on Sparkbuys website announcing the takeover. It just goes to shows that you can at any time make the jump from entrepreneur to employee and vice-versa, also for the risk-adverse the former is probably a easier jump to make. Starting up a startup does have it’s benefits even if you don’t make any money, as long as the goal was to make meaning rather cash.
For a list of other startups that google has purchased head on over here. I especially missed the days where drop.io solved my file sharing problems.
In the past Amazon has purchased Zappos, and Microsoft has purchased skype, not to mention the billion dollar LinkedIn IPO. However, there is a very very long list of startups that are being gobbled up by these big companies for their products AND their know-how (which for most startups is embedded in the employees rather than support documentation). So if you’ve got some free time, or you’re out of a job, you can start your own blog for under 15USD, or you can start a full blown website (with some programming know-how) for under 15USD.