Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.
- Steve Jobs
Source: startupquote
I think something else, something new — something that will require our kids not so much to find their next job as to invent their next job — is also influencing today’s job market more than people realize.
Thomas Friedman
Great article by Thomas Friedman “The Start-Up of You” http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/13/opinion/13friedman.html?_r=2
People of this generation are 120% more likely to be business owners without previous workplace experience, according to the Guardian Life Small Business Research Institute. And 21% of 1,000 college students and recent grads in a Young Entrepreneur Council survey started businesses as a result of unemployment. So for this generation, it’s becoming a create-your-own-job economy.
Our first full day together as a company we attended the SF Makers Faire. The Makers Faire is an annual event where creators get together to show off what they’re building. I had just returned from NY and Sumeet finished his last day at LinkedIn a day before. We didn’t have business cards yet so we went to Kinkos and made them by hand. Overall it was a good time and a fitting way to begin our first day.
My Next Adventure: GoMake.it
Hey everyone,
Today I’m excited to announce I’m leaving my job to start a new journey as cofounder of GoMake.it, a platform for making projects and ideas come to life.
In the time leading up to this decision I had grown increasingly disillusioned with working at a large corporation. The creative energy I had used to create films, art, and companies was suppressed and I felt a tremendous void in my identity. In short my passions and skills did not align with the work I was performing on a day-to-day basis.
After reaching out to my friends it was nearly unanimous I was not alone. The financial meltdown and recession devastated the job market and finding fulfillment in the work place took a back seat to having a job. I felt stuck.
What followed, in typical Max Klausner fashion, was obsessing, ruminating, and ultimately soul searching. Through this process I came to a simple realization: making things and seeing ideas come to life is what makes me happy and what I would like to think I’m good at. I love the process, I love the conflict, and ultimately feel a great sense of achievement in producing a finished product. The projects I’m working on, big or small, paint a picture of who I am and what I value. This is what had been missing and what would be necessary to find fulfillment.
So why had I stopped creating? How could I have more easily found projects to get involved in or the inspiration I needed? Why were my incredibly talented friends spending more time looking for jobs rather than creating them?
In truth it is because making projects and ideas come to life is hard. There are many obstacles every step of the way and the chance of failure is high.
But, what if there was a way to make the process easier by providing tools that helped overcome these obstacles? After spending countless nights discussing the possibilities it became clear to Sumeet (my cofounder) and me that bringing a solution to this problem was the most important thing we could pour our energy into. We became inspired by the potential to create something that could empower people to make their ideas a reality. The more we talked about it the more we felt we had a responsibility to go make it.
In order to reach it’s full potential GoMake.it will need your help. We would love to hear from you if you would like to be more closely involved, learn more about the vision, contribute to our blog or would like to share your experiences. At the very least we request for you to sign up for our private Beta test so you can be one of the first to use GoMake.it and influence the direction of the site.
There will be many more details to come over the coming weeks, which I’m excited to share.
I look forward to getting everyone involved!
Max
