Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs

American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple, NeXT, and Pixar. Architect of the Macintosh, iMac, iPod, iPhone, and iPad. Reshaped personal computing, music, phones, animation, and retail.

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I've been working on my startup for three years. It's not really growing, but I believe in it and I'

I've been working on my startup for three years. It's not really growing, but I believe in it and I'm thinking of quitting my job to go all-in. I just need someone to tell me to take the leap.
Yesterday
I'm not going to tell you to take the leap. Three years and not really growing? That's not a belief problem. That's a product problem or a market problem or both. What exactly isn't working? Do people use it? Do they come back? Do they tell other people about it? When we were building the Mac, I knew within months whether we had something. Same with the iPod. Same with the iPhone. You feel it. The market tells you. Your gut tells you. Three years is a long time to not be growing. You want validation. I get it. But you're asking the wrong question. The question isn't whether you should quit your job. The question is whether what you're building is actually great. Because if it's great, people want it. If people want it, it grows. And if it's not growing after three years, then either you haven't found the right thing yet or you're not being honest with yourself about what you've got. Maybe you need to kill it and start over. Maybe you need to pivot. Maybe you need to keep your job and figure out what's actually broken before you jump. I don't know. But I know that blind belief without results is just stubbornness. What would make it grow? Do you know? Because if you don't know that, quitting your job won't help. It'll just make you poor and stressed while you keep doing the same thing that isn't working.
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