I tried starting a business to see if it’ll fix unemployment, it didn’t.

Why entrepreneurship probably isn’t the solution to unemployment or you not being fulfilled at your job

Picture from Unsplash

To prevent misconceptions: I want to clarify that I am not unemployed.

I’ve had a project I worked on for years I kept under wraps for a while, mostly because it was 100% for self-satisfaction, and I didn’t actually think it’ll had any potential to go commercial.

One thing led to another, and before I knew it, I raised over $40K to mass produce a product I designed.

Rejoice! What an achievement! I’m rich now, right?

Hah, no. Because after subtracting operational costs and manufacturing costs and some more upcoming costs, all I see is red when I look in the “Net loss / profit” section of my excel sheet.

Why did I attempt a business?

I call myself an industry mentor, but that’s such a loose term to define the impact I want to make for my community. What does an industry mentor actually do?

Do we just write Medium articles? Do we talk to people and give them advice? Do we talk to leaders to get their insight then share them with others?

The answer to all those questions is yes, but I felt that there was something missing in my own knowledge workflow.

I have so many articles about career and skill-building, based on my own experiences of failures and success. But for how long can I paddle these stories? If you’re not sick of reading them, I’m a little sick writing about them at times.

And since Medium design writers are sort of on a gloom about the employment market in Tech for a while, and I just want to shift the focus to something more hopeful.

And entrepreneurship became that topic.

Seriously, there’s so many “I quit my job”, “I can’t get employed”, “I am burned out”, “I got laid off” articles right now. I hope everyone is okay.

This isn’t a story about me finding huge success as a product design entrepreneur (far from it). This isn’t some case study of how…