The past decade saw the romanticization of startups and founders. I was one of the young people who got bit by the startup bug around the middle of the decade. And I got bit pretty hard.

I started my startup journey in 2014. I have experienced multiple stages in the startup journey in this half decade, from student startup projects in a course to near college-dropout level attempts at launching a company. Throughout my experience, I was fortunate enough to experience the spectrum of good, bad, and ugly that startup life offers.

But 2019 was the first full year I had as a full time co-founder. Because of this, it was only in 2019 that I was able to fully immerse and appreciate the lessons I’ve learned in the 2010s. Most importantly, it was only in this last year that I really understood that despite all the twists and turns, startup life is filled with beautiful experiences.

What I mean by beautiful is that I find these experiences subjectively pleasing in an aesthetic sense. Another way to express this is that if my startup life was a movie, these experiences would be the iconic or memorable scenes.

I have compiled three of these beautiful experiences in this article.

Sweet dreams are made of these

I sat on the couch at my co-worker’s apartment surrounded by 3 other young salespeople. We were having beers after a long day of work. See, it was my first “real” job as a salesman.

And it wasn’t the power suit, boardroom hero kind of sales job. It was a door to door gig selling internet packages.

The other young men and women in the room were the same. Needless to say, we were all hungry for some cash. Mix that in with indoctrination from our superiors to have that edge to make sales and you have a room full of aggressive ambition.

The group’s conversation was centred on one topic: what’s the fastest way to make 1 million dollars?

Ideas floated around as the drinks came pouring. “Win big at the casino” said one young man in our crowd. “Make a lot of sales and get a lot of commission” said another.

All the ideas floating around were valid, but took either decades or extreme levels of luck to pull off. One young woman was looking at her phone about an article of a recent startup exit.

“I got it, start a startup!” the young woman said, beaming.

I would later find that her answer was technically correct, but also very misleading. Running a startup is one of the hardest things someone can do. It also takes a great degree of luck to find any success with startups.

Regardless, the room bought it. We immediately started formulating startup ideas left and right. We also quickly shifted into just dreaming about what we’d do with the money we could get after doing that multimillion dollar startup.

Most grizzled entrepreneurs may scoff at the idea of inexperienced people dreaming about startups. But let’s not forget, the road to entrepreneurship doesn’t start with an idea, it starts with a dream.

Whether it’s to right some injustice in the world or to make a ton of money, everyone has a dream. Entrepreneurs are just those who decided to act on that dream and start a venture to achieve it.

Dreaming isn’t bad. In fact, it’s pretty important. Just remember you have to wake up at some point.

Brainstorming is the most fun you can have without taking your shoes off

The colourful and cartoonish bottles of nicotine juice provide an interesting contrast with the dark walls and hip-hop inspired artwork. Plumes from e-cigarettes cloud up the room, giving a hazy, almost dreamlike atmosphere.

I sat on the worn leather couch across the counter. It was already going past closing time, but the conversation I was having with the shop keeper was just flowing. We couldn’t stop.

It was the advent of accessible VR and we were both excited about what it all meant. Our conversation circled around what VR can do for the world, what possibilities existed, and how we can get in on the action. At some point, I said:

“I don’t think these ideas are gonna do themselves”

At that moment, Simili VR was born. The shop keeper’s name was Colin, and he was my first ever co-founder.

Any experienced founder will tell you that ideas are dime a dozen in the startup world. This is partly because talking and coming up with these ideas is some of the most fun anyone can ever have, and so there are lots of them. Everyone, founder or not, has had conversations where they talked about ideas for new or existing businesses.

Brainstorming is a very important business activity because everything starts from an idea. However, in a way, brainstorming can also be the startup world’s version of escapism. More often than not, ideas that come out of brainstorming sessions are either impossible or impractical to execute. And execution is everything in business.

A year or so later, and Simili VR officially failed. But even so, the first brainstorming session and every other ones after that are still the most fun I’ve ever had until that point. Hundreds of ideas flowed in those brainstorming sessions, and every single one felt oh so magical.

The “triviality” of moonshot ideas doesn’t take away the fact that brainstorming is just pure FUN.

Train wrecks: you just can’t look away

Five senior college students were seated on a round table. They were in a ballroom in one of the most prestigious hotels in town. It was for a conference filled with aspiring consultants and entrepreneurs.

The conference’s main event was a startup competition. A competition that the five students spent nearly two semesters preparing for.

The team felt so assured they were going to win. They felt extremely confident that they delivered a compelling presentation on stage. Their delivery went as well as they could have hoped. They even had functional prototypes handed to the judges.

There was only silence in the hall as one of the judges stepped onto the stage. The air was still and tense as he stood behind the podium.

“The contestants all performed admirably”, he spoke. “However, as in real business, there has to be winners and losers. And sometimes, no matter how well something is presented, results and big wins matter more”

That last sentence felt like a direct shot to the hearts of every member of the team.

“It is my honour to present the winners of this competition…”

It was not the five students in this story. Instead it was a team who had demonstrated real world traction in their project. They had landed a partnership with a major restaurant chain before they even had a prototype. In other words, their startup idea produced real results and by Lean Startup definitions, was the better startup team.

As people started leaving the ballroom, the crestfallen team remained seated at the table. Their friends at the event consoled them with compliments on their wonderful presentation. But drama eventually found its way. One team member got so frustrated with the loss, he stormed out in frustration

I was a part of that team. Specifically, I was the frustrated team member who went out with a tantrum.

The saying “fail fast and fail often” needs to come with a disclaimer: failing kind of sucks. It hurts to lose and it hurts even more when you put your heart and soul into it. And when you fail hard and fast in a spectacular fashion? It’s like getting hit by a truck.

What I didn’t know at the time was that spectacular failure served as the ultimate climax to my university senior year.

It was indeed a major turning point. From that point forward, I began to accept that results trump everything else. It forced me to mature and to become more realistic in my entrepreneurial pursuits.

And it wasn’t a slow realization either. The beautiful thing about hard and fast failures is that they force you to immediately change your perspective.

The resolution of the story is that all five team members went their separate ways and found success in their own lane. That part of is one for another day. The moral of the day is that the trainwreck moments of failure are beautiful in their own way.

I look back at that night very fondly. I reminisce about the passion I felt, even if it led me to act immaturely upon defeat. When I replay that memory in my head, it’s like I am watching a train running perfectly smooth only to derail suddenly and combust into flames. And it’s only during these early days of the new decade that I have come to appreciate the experience for what it is.

There’s a reason we can’t seem to look away from train wrecks. The show is often worth the price of admission.

Over the tail end of the 2010s, I began to observe some cynicism towards the startup life. There’s a lot of people who did get burned by the wave. It has become apparent that statistically, doing a startup leads to eventual failure.

But I think because of that, it is more important than ever to have optimism as an entrepreneur. To find beauty in the experiences that come with it. To find meaning in the journey rather than to keep tunnel vision on the destination.

Entrepreneurs and soon-to-be entrepreneurs, let’s welcome the 2020s with high hopes. And know that regardless of those high hopes being fulfilled, the road we are taking is full of life-defining experiences.

Here’s to the new decade.