Entrepreneur
I want to invent something cool.
Twilio, SimpleGeo, BankSimple, Mint, Turntable, Spotify
It's an emotional roller coaster, and I have no idea where I'll be six months out, but that's half the fun!
Of the startups I've been close to (not necessarily been in) it's been pivoting too soon/too much. Moving fast and honing in on PMF is good, but not being dedicated enough to one idea to see it through to the point of judging it as "let's do this," or, "let's pivot" means you end up jumping from crappy idea to crappy idea, never getting anything of substance done.
1) It's hard.
2) It requires me, as an engineer, to approach problems differently. Optimizing a solution to a problem is slow and labor-intensive, but it's what most engineers do in industry. Tweaking the problem you're solving, however, is easy but can yield great gains as far as how close you come to a fit with a market.
3) Co-founders have to be friends first. By that, I mean, you all care about each other more than you do about the company. I've had the pleasure of this being the case, but I've seen the reverse and it's not the way to go.
Software Engineer. Computer graphics and multitouch wizard. Dual BS in CS/CompE from The U of K. Former overachiever at Lexmark.