Over the past few years, I’ve had countless conversations with people on the verge of a career pivot. Some were my mentees. Some were aspiring founders I met at accelerators. Others were professionals who pulled me aside after an event, lowered their voice, and said:

“I think I’m ready to leave my corporate job and start something of my own.”

Whenever I hear that, I don’t say yes and I don’t say no.
I simply ask: Why?

Because after hearing hundreds of these stories, one pattern stands out clearly:
Most people aren’t actually struggling with their business idea — they’re struggling with their motivation.

And unexamined motivation is one of the biggest reasons talented people burn out early in entrepreneurship.

So if you’re thinking about leaving your company for a founder role, consider this a quiet conversation over coffee — the kind that many founders wish someone had with them before they quit.

Below are the four myths I hear most often.

Myth 1: “My corporate job is full of incompetent people. I’m leaving to work with smarter ones.”

This myth almost always starts with a story — a frustrating boss, a colleague who slowed down a project, a meeting that made you question humanity.

“Everyone here is so incompetent,” they say.
“I’ll have more control if I run my own thing.”

The truth is less glamorous.

Entrepreneurship exposes you to more incompetence, not less — and this time, there’s no buffer between their mistakes and your bank account.

I’ve worked with:

• Vendors who disappeared midway through deliverables

• Contractors who promised the world and delivered broken code

• “Experts” who sounded smart on Zoom and vanished when it was time to execute

• Partners who said “we’re in this together” and were absolutely not in this together

And let’s not even start on clients — whether B2B or B2C.
As a founder, you cannot escape this part of the job anymore. You become customer support, account manager, educator, and firefighter all at once.

You will explain things in a very, very simple way, repeatedly.
And suddenly, that “incompetent” colleague from your old job starts to look like Einstein.

Entrepreneurship won’t protect you from difficult people.
It will put them front-row in your daily operations.

Myth 2: “Being a founder means I work for myself and gain freedom.”

People imagine entrepreneurship as the ticket to autonomy.
“No more managers,” they say.
“No more approvals. Total freedom.”

Let me offer the unfiltered version.

Entrepreneurs work for more people, not fewer.

Every customer becomes your boss.
Every investor becomes your boss.
Every user, contractor, lender, and supplier becomes someone you must answer to.

But here’s the moment most people never see:

A founder friend once told me she spent her entire birthday weekend debugging a feature because the next product test depended on it. No brunch. No celebration. Just her laptop and a stubborn error message.

And I understood that completely.

I, too, technically have “unlimited vacation.”
But I also really don’t.

Working on weekends is normal for me. My employees get holidays. They still get paid.
But if I don’t work on weekends, holidays, or my birthday…
I don’t get paid.

I wrote about this reality here if you’re curious:
Be the Boss Who Still Shows Up at 3AM

Entrepreneurship gives you flexibility — yes.
But it also gives you responsibility so large that the flexibility is rarely used.

Myth 3: “Being a founder looks cool.”

This one is fueled by polished LinkedIn posts and startup media.

You see the fundraising announcements.
You see the sleek headshots.
You see the “CEO & Founder” title and it feels… aspirational.

But behind the scenes, the journey is the most unforgiving meritocracy you’ll ever encounter.

Where you went to school?
What degrees you earned?
Your shiny titles (MBB, Big Four, IB, PE)?

All of that matters a little in the beginning — but not for long.

Once you’re building, it’s just:

You + Product + Market.

If that equation doesn’t work, nothing else matters.

Coming from someone who was a straight-A student all the way up, I was never hit so hard as I was in my first startup. Nothing worked. No matter how hard I tried. No matter how “good” my business plan looked in theory.

Starting from zero is the closest thing to an impossible task.
And most of the journey happens off-camera.

Myth 4: “Entrepreneurship will make me more money than my corporate job.”

This is both true and untrue.

In my MBA class at MIT, I have classmates who:

• Sold their companies to Spotify

• Took their startups public — and in a big, successful way

I also have classmates who spent ten years building startups that went nowhere.
Ten years.
Earnings = 0.

If you’re making $150K+ today, your income is a guaranteed return. Entrepreneurship gives you high upside — but also real downside.

You’re trading stability for volatility.
Security for possibility.
Predictability for a chance — not a guarantee — at financial freedom.

Entrepreneurship can absolutely make you more money than your corporate role.
But the probability is far lower than people imagine.

So Why Do People Still Become Entrepreneurs?

Not because they hate corporate.
Not because they want freedom.
Not because it looks cool.

The best founders I’ve met made the switch because they saw:

• A problem they couldn’t stop thinking about

• An unmet demand they felt compelled to solve

• A market signal that was too strong to ignore

• A deeper alignment between what they wanted to build and what the world needed

They jumped in not out of resentment, but because their motivation was rooted in:

clarity, passion, and real market pull — not escape.

These are the motivations that carry you through the nights, the uncertainty, the debugging sessions on your birthday.

Entrepreneurship is hard.
It humbles you.
It forces you to rebuild your identity from the ground up.

But for the people who choose it for the right reasons, it becomes one of the most meaningful journeys of their life.