How risky is it to start a startup vs having a good stable job?

I understand if someone is asking this question, the person isn't ready. But would like to know from founders, what was your motivation ? What pushed you over from a 9-5? Is it just taking a bet on yourself and working towards solving the problem?

Hello grapevines! Need your help/opinion here. I work for a big corp. ~6YOE. 48L. The work culture here seems a bit off. Constant pressure to compete and snatch the work and prove oneself. Chaos is being glorified. Onsite team is unresponsive and hiding information. Asking for a KT is being judged upon(expectation is apparently to read through the code). Everyone is trying to earn brownie points by impressing the manage because no one seems to know what to work upon. Technical ability is being looked down upon in the name of domain knowledge. I switched recently to upskill and grow, but seems like it was a wrong choice. I’m looking for early stage startups to switch to. I know the current market situation is bad, but I’d take the risk as long as I’m getting to expose myself to good problem statements and less bullshit.

I recently worked at a startup and it was terrible. To be honest, I still worked at one of the better ones but it just sucked. Some of the clear downsides I see - Survival mode leads to chaos. You can be treated anyway and asked to leave whenever even though you left big opportunities to be here - Brand loss to find next job (Big problem) - Trying to make you feel unworthy(Doesn't bother me but I have seen people lose self confidence) - Loss of opportunity to build real skills like building sustainable teams for the long run I think over all working at a startup especially early teams is a losing proposition. Do it only if - - you know the founders/team well - you know the industry and market well and it is a bet you personally believe in - you are secure enough in life that if you go back to your job, you will easily get employed For middle class kids, startups are the worst bets one can take.

I know this will sound like a very biased opinion but just sharing my 2 cents of today’s market. The way with highest probability of success, money and ensuring a better future for your future generations is to startup. It has the highest risk, highest reward. But in today’s landscape: where inflation is always higher than your hike, there’s no guarantee of employment even in next 1 years, the effort to remain in top 1% is humongous and many other reasons like that, really make me feel that if you’re able to start a company and even capture 0.1% of market who’s willing to pay something for your service/product, that’s all you need. Of course the struggle doesn’t end there and you have to keep working for as long as possible? But your capacity to earn and provide for generations to come is much higher than working for someone else. All disagreement is welcome :) Just tired of running this race for years now and still never feeling financially secure.

I received 2 offers recently, for context I'm graduating this year- 1 - a PPO for an early stage startup I have been interning for. TC - 10 base + share of revenue generated. Essentially it is a founders office role, but will be closing sales too. Good culture, profitable. 2- Browserstack for SDET role, TC - 11 base + 5 performance pay+bonus. Conflict is - should I choose the startup due to its potential high returns and my preference for the founders office role or BS for stable income and brand value ?

This question is to anyone who left a stable job and joined an early stage startup. How did you deal with the uncertainty, the high pace, and the changes in life style. I have accepted an offer from a startup and i feel very nervous. Mainly because Im afraid of what if it doesn’t turns out right. I do not want to start looking for jobs again.

A senior of mine, took a job with 30% paycut after being laid off earlier this year. The work is okay, but no growth from what he can see (service based company problems) He has a casual offer to move to Bangalore and work for a friend's seed funded startup. The pay maybe significantly lesser than what he is making right now (so further paycut), but the work is a dream role, will get to shape and build the product basically immense growth. Bangalore is an expensive city, less money will be another concern. For background, he is 33M, not married, working remotely from his hometown so saving on rent too.

Hi, I am a 2023 passout btech graduate. Currently I am working as a full time SDE (Full Stack) in a well established startup (8 years old , Series A funded). It's been nearly half year here. My compensation is 10.5 lakh base + 4.5 lakh performance bonus + free lunch and snacks + Insurance (Including parents) benefits I am pretty good at DSA (around 2000 rating on leetcode, 4 Star at codechef in 2nd year itself, 2000+ dsa problems) I have worked in 2 startups as an SDE intern during college days and completed 5 internships overall out of which one was a US based startup. Also, I have many publications under my name over the internet. I had many offers when I was graduating from college. Most of the time people say, "Hey, you have done so much so Why are you not working in a big tech". Well I always wanted to work for big tech during college days but after I started working in startups my thought process changed as here I got the ownership of the product. Now it has been nearly 1 year since I started working in startups. Should I give it a try for big tech now? Would like to hear your views guys

The general advice that I have heard is to just keep learning and enter the workforce when it is normal again. But I thought for some people, this is the push that they needed to build their own startup or business. Sitting without any job that screw anybody's mind so this seems to be an option too. Funding is dried up but people with a good enough runaway can start a business together in a bootstrapped manner. Even if you return to the workforce right now, there isn't a guarantee you'll be getting your previous CTC, the previous WLB. Companies are trying to cost cut by overloading on a per employee basis and raising competitive nature between teammates themselves. If you getting this much toll, 70 hours per week in worst cases, might as well put that effort on your own venture. Building a startup is risky. But when your current job is itself risky, doesn't seem wrong to build one. But popping up of such small scale business doesn't happen much. Why?

The general advice that I have heard is to just keep learning and enter the workforce when it is normal again. But I thought for some people, this is the push that they needed to build their own startup or business. Sitting without any job that screw anybody's mind so this seems to be an option too. Funding is dried up but people with a good enough runaway can start a business together in a bootstrapped manner. Even if you return to the workforce right now, there isn't a guarantee you'll be getting your previous CTC, the previous WLB. Companies are trying to cost cut by overloading on a per employee basis and raising competitive nature between teammates themselves. If you getting this much toll, 70 hours per week in worst cases, might as well put that effort on your own venture. Building a startup is risky. But when your current job is itself risky, doesn't seem wrong to build one. But popping up of such small scale business doesn't happen much. Why?