If I quit my 9-5 to build a $50M tech startup again, this is what I'd do...

10 years ago I quit my six-figure job in the oil industry but just five years after that my first tech company had 20 million dollars in its bank account. Now here's the truth, I didn't just quit my job because I wanted to follow my dreams as some gurus might tell you but instead I quit when I knew exactly how to do one thing and I was confident in knowing how to So in this video I'm going to show you the exact path that you can take from feeling trapped in a corporate life to building something real and you need to watch this whole video because by the end you'll know what skills you need to focus on, when you should quit and most importantly how you can escape your corporate job without burning your safety net and So firstly we have to talk about this but most people are sold this lie, you've been told to just quit your job, follow your dreams and this sounds romantic and sounds great but it's terrible advice, it's terrible advice. So here's the truth, don't quit until you actually have the skills to To be a successful entrepreneur, to build a successful company, I don't care what anyone tells you but you need to have one of these two skills, you need to know how to build or you need to know how to sell or even better you need to know both. When I left my job I knew how to build but here's the next thing, I wasn't world class at it, I just knew it good enough and to be competent enough to do something with it. But ultimately what I want you to take away from this first point is you need to know how to build things or you need to know how to sell because the combination of these two things is your leverage, this is how you can create value, this is how you start to move. If you cannot do these things you have no leverage and you cannot quit your job and just go and start a new company. Now the next question that comes across and that many of you might have is okay I don't know how to build, I don't know how to sell, so what should I do? Well here's the thing, it might take 10 years to become world class at something but you don't need to be world class at it. It will take you six months to become competent at one of these things. If you work at the right intensity and if you use the right resources and if you have the right coaches and mentors you can become great at building products or great at selling products within six months. I am 100% sure of this, I pretty much did that myself and I've seen many many entrepreneurs and people around me do that in even faster periods of time. Just remember Twitter's MVP, the MVP for Twitter was built in two weeks, not in four weeks, not in six months, not in two years, they built the first version in two weeks. So you need to be good enough to build an MVP and today with no code tools like lovable and bolt you can quickly build prototypes and MVPs even without knowing how to code. And here's a visual that's going to help you. Remember to be able to master something it takes a lot of time, you can see this kind of tail end of the curve where it can take years to become the best at something. But to go from beginner and just starting off to basic confidence that curve can be very very quick and that's what I mean by spending that six months to intensely build that skill, get to the beginning of that competence curve where you are basic, where you have basic confidence and then you're good to go. You have leverage at that stage, you don't need mastery and you can look at quitting your job and starting to build your new company. Okay next section is how can you actually learn the skill in six months because I've mentioned this a few times and you might be wondering where do I start? I don't have mentors, I don't have money, I don't have time and that's okay. So what I did is I learned how to code through osmosis by exposing myself to projects, by trying to build things, by speaking to other engineers, by working with other engineers, by working part time, taking on many contracts and many projects and building things for free as well. I moved to I joined startups while I was studying. I wasn't chasing a salary, I was chasing how to get to that basic competence skill set right. So if you're unsure where to start, join a small startup, work for free if you have to, learn by proximity and learn from people who know what they're doing and that's the fastest way to learn. You're gonna learn through osmosis and by being around people that have this skill set. So takeaway here is don't study entrepreneurship right, don't study it from books. You learn by doing and you learn the skill of building by actually building, surprise surprise. The best way to learn is actually to launch your own startup but you start off by working inside another startup. So join a startup for free, offer to work for free, then after that you're watching how founders in that startup operate. Chances are they are experienced builders or experienced sellers and you will learn a ton from doing that. Then the next level up is you learn by building small things and finally as I mentioned you're going to learn the most by most by just launching your damn startup and failing or succeeding and iterating from there. So remember once again you don't learn startups from theory, you learn by getting into the theater, getting into the ring, getting into the arena and doing. Get into the fire, make mistakes, get hurt but do, do, do, do. This is a really important point that I have to address because many many founders come to me and they're like I have the best ideas, I'm an idea person, I have the vision. I don't care, ideas are cheap, execution is what compounds, execution is where the money is So here's the thing, this is the value chain of creation that I want to introduce, this is the value chain of creation that I want you to remember. Ideas have low value, it's at the bottom of the pyramid. Yes you need ideas but everyone has ideas. The difference between all my friends that have amazing ideas and the ones that actually become entrepreneurs and build successful businesses is that the ones who have ideas and the ones who actually start to build their skills and execute those ideas, they are the successful ones. I have tons of friends with better ideas but they're not doing anything, they're just stuck in their corporate job right. So that's what you got to do, move away from this concept of I have ideas, this is low value, move up to skills, this is a medium value but above all move to the highest point which is execution. Learn to actually move from idea to building to testing to speaking to customers, all those great things which is what entrepreneurship and building a startup is actually about. And just remember everyone has ideas, very few people have proof that their ideas are going to work because they didn't actually get out there and test them, they're either too scared or they're waiting to read the next book. Don't make that mistake. Lastly, this is an important point because you might be saying okay I have the skill to build, I have ideas, I want to go out and execute, I'm also ready to quit my job but what should I do? What idea am I most likely to succeed building? For me, my first company Unibuddy, it was a company built for students by students. Guess what I was at the time? I was a student so I was building what I was the expert of. So here's a Venn diagram that's going to put across to what you should build and you should build where you have an unfair advantage. This is the merger of three things. One is problems that you feel that you understand, two is skills that you have and three is markets that you understand. So you might think you understand the problem of solving some problem in a hospital but if you've never worked in a hospital, if you've never been a doctor, if you've never been in the healthcare industry, chances are you don't understand the market. Even though if you might have the skill to build a healthcare product, if you don't understand the market and you don't truly understand the problem, you're unlikely to succeed. So you want to find the center point of what are the problems you truly understand or have experienced yourself. Maybe it's from an industry you worked in in corporate and by that logic you'll also understand the markets and then we spoke about this but you have the skills to build it and the merger of those three things is where you have an unfair advantage and you should start over there. So we've gone through these five important points, you're now ready to start, you know what you need to build up before you quit your job. Comment below what is that starting point for you. If you think about problems you understand, markets you understand and the skills that you have, what are the areas where you have unfair advantages and you can start building in. Comment below and I will reply to every single one of you and help you take the next step to building your business. I'll see you at the next video.