Don''t Create a Startup Just Because You Hate Your Boss

The cult classic Office Space

By Ed McLaughlin and Wyn Lydecker

Are you thinking of quitting your job and starting your own business? Many employees think about quitting because they hate their boss or feel stuck. Job dissatisfaction is notably wide spread.

According to Forbes, 48% of employees worldwide don’t even like their jobs, and only 30% feel “engaged and inspired” by their careers. While many workers truly hate their bosses, is that a good reason to walk out the door for good?

Leaving a well-paying job with benefits to start your own business is a complicated decision. You should not take such a drastic step just because you have one bad boss, as long as the organization you work for is basically good and still offers you opportunities. You can switch to another position or work hard to be promoted away from your boss. Don’t get us wrong; sometimes a bad boss is the perfect catalyst that will make you leave your current position, start up, and never look back.

The Right Reasons to Start a Business

The real and best reasons to start your own venture are more complex:

Do you want to leave because you see a need in the market for a product you have the expertise to make or deliver?
Are you dying for independence and control?
Do you have distinctive competence that will enable you to utilize your knowledge and contacts to develop your idea and bring in pre-orders before you launch?
Is the market changing and creating a time-sensitive opportunity?
Have you developed a roadmap to profitability?

These are all legitimate reasons for leaving BigCo to start NewCo.

Ashish Toshniwal, co-founder of Y Media Labs, a company that develops mobile apps for PayPal, eBay, and American Express, said, “You never want to start a company as a reaction to a bad situation…we were really passionate about this new technology, and we saw an inflection point, where growth was just about to take off. Wanting to leave an unchallenging job, or any particular boss, was never the motivation.”

Why I Left BigCo to Start NewCo

I wanted to become an entrepreneur from the time I was a teenager, yet I worked in corporations for years. It took discovering my distinctive competence and recognizing an opportunity in the market to make me finally feel the confidence to make my move. The final straw, however, was an untenable situation at work. Still, before I quit for good, I found partners to work with me, took months to develop a roadmap, and worked to secure pre-orders.

Quitting my corporate job and starting USI was one of the best decisions of my life. After I bootstrapped the business, we grew the company to the Inc. 500 level and sold it to a Fortune 100 company 14 years later.

Could You Use a Startup Roadmap?

For a limited time, I am sharing a complimentary eCopy of “The Startup Roadmap: 21 Steps to Profitability.” Click here to get it. The 21 Steps are similar to the ones I took in launching and growing my business. “The Startup Roadmap” also includes a preview of our upcoming book, “The Purpose Is Profit: The Truth about Starting and Growing Your Own Business.” In that preview, you can read about my startup quandary and the reasons I finally quit my job and started USI.

Ed McLaughlin is currently co-writing the book, The Purpose Is Profit: The Truth about Starting and Building Your Own Business, with Wyn Lydecker and Paul McLaughlin.