Eugene Borukhovich's Profile

1. Love your dream. Don’t kid yourself. It will be very difficult to work two jobs. You’ve got to love what you are trying to do with your startup. You have to have passion to work 20 hour days for a long period of time.

2.Assess how much time you have. The cliche “time is money” is not a joke. Most people grossly under-estimate how much time they have to devote to something. Working two jobs swallowed up every available minute of my time.

3. Be honest with yourself about what you’re prepared to sacrifice. You know yourself better than anyone knows you. Understand what you will need to give up and understand the sacrifices you’ll have to make. And consider that you might be under-estimating all of these things.

4. Know your breaking point. At some point – and perhaps multiple times – you’ll find yourself near your breaking point. For me, it was the voice mail from my daughter asking me when I was returning home from Germany (I hadn’t seen my kids in one week). For others, it’s finances or other interests. When you approach your breaking point, sit down and assess your resolve. Make sure that you are still committed to doing what you’re doing.

5. Learn as much as you can about what you are about to do. If this is your first start-up (as it was for me), understand what motivates you and what you don’t know. Learn everything you can about your product, market, competitors, customers, users, etc. You will run into many problems along the way, and will be able to deal with them only if you continue to have a search for knowledge and only if you understand the scope of what you are doing.

If you have your own tips or stories, please feel free to share in the comments.