Startup Mania can be defined as the enthusiasm of a person
to startup. Based on a lot of cases I have seen, this mania tends to follow a
pattern with the age of a person. This may not be accurate in your case or
cases you may have seen, but is the general trend I have seen in people around
me.
THE STARTUP MANIA CURVE EXPLAINED
In college, everyone now is talking startups. “Startup is
the new guitar. Every college kid wants one” - Arunabh Kumar. A person who is
20 and in college tends to develop a very strong startup mania and is highly
inclined to startup or join a startup.
Once this stage passes and you get into a mainstream job,
the mania tends to go down. You start working and get ‘settled’ in your job.
Things look good as you are learning a lot and doing new stuff. After 3-4
years, you start getting rewarded for the efforts put in and things keep moving
in your career.
Around 10 years in to the job, a stage comes when you feel
you are not happy. You have a family, you are earning well, so why this
feeling? You start thinking and realize maybe you are not enjoying your work
anymore. You have heard people talking about how exciting startup life is. An
urge again comes to startup and your mania levels rocket upwards.
If this phases passes again and you end up either staying in
your company or end up merely changing a job, you tend to get ‘settled’ again.
This time, you do so for a long period. Now you decide to forget about startups
and really start focusing on your job and career growth. You start looking at
the highest position you can reach in your job and start putting in efforts for
attaining it. This is usually the longest phase and your startup mania remains
low in it.
You know you have to retire at some age (generally around
60). 5-7 years before it, you start planning your retirement. You are old but
you still want to work. After all, how much can you travel or meditate or
relax? You start planning a business which you can start and which can be with
you even after you retire. The mania rises again.
After this stage, the mania is irrelevant and you end up
doing what you want to do combined with what is available to you.
