Did you have any particular fear when creating a company?

Hello Marie, thanks for your question!

I don't recall having a particular fear, we were very bullish from the start. However in hindsight that confidence didn't always play to our favour in the sense that it did take more time than we expected to fine tune our product in order to make sure it suited the market - we were perhaps too sure that we got the product right from the start.

Perhaps with a bit more fear at the start we would have been listening to the market a bit earlier on. But we have learned from this. Today, when when we look at something new, whether a new product feature to launch or new country to market our service, we spend quite a bit of time thinking about both the upside and the downside of doing so, and the bar for saying "yes let's do it!" is quite high.

Bottom line too much fear can stifle, but some fear is a good thing!

Hope this helps!

Alon

Hi Marie,

Thanks for your question.

To be honest, I had absolutely no fear when creating PathMotion, on the contrary it was a huge relief to finally be able to work on my own business on something that I was passionate about with people I enjoyed working with (i.e. my co-founders) and on which I could have a significant influence and impact on! I had a burning desire for a while already to go the entrepreneurship route so it happened quite naturally and I haven’t looked back a single day since starting the adventure despite the many sacrifices.

That doesn’t mean I didn’t have a lot of doubts and hesitations (and that I made a lot of mistakes) all along the way but I wouldn’t qualify it as fear. Doubts and questions included making sure to work on the right idea (including in making sure the problem we were solving was big enough), finding the right product-market fit, building the right team, making sure our business model made sense, that our go to market strategy was viable, etc. and to be honest we still have a lot of doubts and questions as we scale PathMotion and we constantly push ourselves to think hard and innovate in every aspect of the business, never taking anything for granted.

Hope this answers your questions.

Best,
David

Hello Marie,

Thanks for your interesting question that I think is very relevant for anyone thinking about creating their own company/business.

On my side, I have to admit that since I graduated from my Computer Sciences school, my only experience has been in creating companies. I founded my first company as a CEO, which started as a replacement of my end of study internship, based on a product that was started for a 2 year school project about online video publication.

At that time, I did not have any particular fear as I was young, without too much money or finance issues/loan to deal with, and still in the mind that I could manage to have a kind of "student style of life". But the interesting point is that the fears about such a move did not come from me, but mostly from my family/mother who thought it was a risky move and I could get to a better salary/position with a standard job position in any existing company. But that was not my dream at that time; I just wanted to create things, build my own product, find my own market, change the world (just that), etc. So I decided just to stay on that way, knowing that any failure I could meet would be a way to learn for my professional future& I've never had regret since then.

Then, after that first founded company, I co-founded another one with which we could have performed a nice VC round (in 2009) but finally ended as a kind of failure as we had been badly advised.

For my next professional move, when I was thinking at that time to take a job position as a normal Web Developer to get some financial stability& I met my current co-founders David & Alon, and I decided to forget my search for a traditional job position because I was excited and very motivated to join the idea/vision of PathMotion. No fear, just motivation to join a great team, and a great project that would be helpful for people!

To summarise, when there is passion and motivation, fears cannot beat it. You always need to believe in your dream, and find ways where you will reach your passion. There is no better job than doing something that you will love, and when you create a product and company, it will be with love. So, let's move to the direction of love and passion, and believe in tenacity, because one day it will pay! :)

I hope this answer will be quite inspiring in your reflection if you are thinking to launch something, and feel free to drop any other question you may have.

Cheers,
Nassim

Thank you all for your answer! I find very inspiring that you are so pragmatic about your experiences in launching a business. I founded an event company a bit more than a year ago, and wasn't really successful. So I will remember your testimonies for the future!

You are welcome and great to know you had an entrepreneurial adventure which is something you should be proud of! I’m sure you learned a lot from it and have built skills and experiences which are going to be valuable in your next jobs, which you should see as a real success!