there is a widespread illusion that if you work on a startup instead of climbing the ladder of a big tech you'll waste years and if you fail and want to go back to big tech you'll be at the same level than before the startup this is false the learning curve of building a startup is more steep than in a narrow job, when i failed my first startup (after going from 0 to 5 fig in a few months and going through techstars) i got the opportunity of working at openai (before it got cool) because they like my startup experience i denied because i preferred working on more nonlinear problems but i would never had the opportunity if i stayed in big tech however a strong point here - failure is when you quit often people confuse defeat with failure defeat = data, while failure is when you give up upon defeat winners don't quit #entrepreneurship #startup #failure