Starting Up #6 - 10 Years Between Idea and Execution (Don't Be Like Me)

Episode notes

I had a million-dollar idea in 2004. I didn't do a single thing about it until 2014. That's a full decade where this idea sat in the back of my head, gathering dust, while I worked a regular job and told myself "someday." In Episode 6 of Starting Up, Jay Sensi gets brutally honest about the three reasons he sat on the Campus Kaizen idea for ten years — and what each one really was: an excuse disguised as logic. The comfortable trap of a steady paycheck. The "I can't code" excuse that felt like an insurmountable barrier. The lack of a mentor or founder network that made entrepreneurship feel like a club he didn't have the membership card for. Then Jay tells the real story of what finally made him snap. After years of busting his ass at Lockheed Martin — graduating from their selective Leadership Development Program, bringing data to performance reviews, outperforming his peers — he kept getting passed over for promotions that went to average performers with longer tenure. The realization hit: effort doesn't equal reward in the corporate world. And if he was going to go above and beyond, it was going to be for himself.