Hey dreamer, what’s the worst that can happen?

Hi everyone, this is my first post on LinkedIn ever and I’m very excited to about this one.

This post directly talks to all of you who aspire to startup, do something different or want to move out of a boring corporate job to join a startup but haven’t got themselves to do it.

As a 25 year old living out in an expensive city like Hong Kong with mediocre savings, a lot of family and friends have shown appreciated towards the decision of starting Planto.

I really think you should do it too if you want to by asking what’s the worst that can happen?

I actually went to school and have worked with ton of smart & hardworking people who have always aspired to startup. Some of them even have great ideas and are committed to working hard but they just can’t get themselves to do it.

I asked myself 3 questions before starting Planto:

1. Do I have enough money to eat and live for at least a year and half? A quick look at my bank accounts, estimation of the money I’d need for survival each month with a minimal lifestyle plus a couple of thousand dollars (USD) to spend in marketing Planto. Check.
2. Am I in love with the problem I want to solve? When I started working on Planto with my friends, we started with just a simple gig to solve a personal problem after work. We didn’t quite know where this was going but we were in love with what we were solving. Check.
3. Lastly, what’s the worst that can happen? If you have checked the first two questions, than this is the last frontier. Meeting up with my co-founders over lunch one day led to a conversation about working on Planto full time. The realisation that committing to working on Planto could only lead to no income and burn in our savings against the upside ofaccelerating learning, chance to build something that millions may use and freedom of having 24 hours to yourself made the decision sound pretty simple. This also means we would start Planto with absolutely no fear of failure but with a genuine willingness to solve the problem we fell in love with. The realisation that there was nothing to loose removed any doubts we had about doing this full time.

Zuckerberg’s message of purpose in his commencement address at Harvard in 2017 truly echoes “what’s the worst that can happen?” A lot of us are privileged to pursue our own purpose without the fear of losing everything and “not having a cushion to fall back on” (Thanks Mark!)

So you want to startup? What’s stopping you again?

If you found this post interesting, do connect with me on LinkedIn as I look to write and document more of my journey here.

Ankit is the founder of Planto (www.planto.io), a financial technology startup in Hong Kong that makes it easy for people to manage their finances and reach their financial goals. He blogs about Entrepreneurship, Personal Finance and Fintech.