It is Jeff Bezos that said “You don’t choose your passion, your passion chooses you.” And that is true to a large extent.
I am actually wondering how your passion could change in just two years from medicine to entrepreneurship. I hope in the next two years it wont change to something else.
Having said that, the best thing in life is always to pursue your dreams. However, ambitions are expensive and dreams cost money. Do you have the budget? Every young entrepreneur often thinks they have this really cool idea that investors will be willing to pump money into. But like Mike Tyson said, “You always feel you have a plan until you get punched in the face.”
On a personal note, I started entrepreneurship in medical school also. I learnt how to code and was also able to raise up to 500K in equity from my colleagues back then. (You know lots of rich kids study medicine, I exploited that opportunity!) But how did it go? Your guess is as good as mine, it failed. It was a forex investment and I wrote these really shitty robots! It’s only much later after I developed profitable trading systems that I realized I must have been really stupid in what I did. I committed a financial suicide’ cos I didn’t take time to learn the trade neither did I have enough experience in it. Even though I had my ‘investors’ sign and thumb-print on a document that said they were willing to lose their money if the investment fails, I still paid back their money when I started work. Integrity is what you don’t want to compromise in business.
@Bibiana has given you the horrible stat - 95% of startups fail. But that’s not the problem. The real problem is when you are not able to start again. The art of the comeback is even more rewarding because you would have been more experienced. Since then I have started 3 more businesses. My second startup was something that could have turned into an online shop for wholesale with delivery. It closed when I had to go for service. The third was a 4-bed clinic with e-health components such as EHR. I invested a fortune into it but I had to close it down after a few months. I had the option of continuing with the brick and mortar version but it wasn’t the money per se, it was about the mission. Now, I am onto my fourth startup (and second business model, the initial one failed) which we are keeping low-keyed. We are bootstrapping and have also developed a performance-based funding strategy in that if we don’t meet a particular milestone, we ain’t seeking no funding. We have also acquired enough experience in the art and now know what we are doing. Of course, the results are beginning to show.
How has it been possible for me to continue from one startup to another? Because I have been able to afford the cost, at least enough to put food on my table and also bootstrap. Just like you, I was faced with the option of dropping out of my postgraduate medical training (residency) to focus fully on my startup. But I can’t be stupid. Experience has taught me that it’s not always what you think, it is how the market responds. So I will only be able to resign after I have attained a particular milestone which I have set for myself.
It is not impossible to combine medicine and entrepreneurship. You only have to be sure what you are doing, and most importantly, why. I would advice you to continue with both. You can use the psychological mechanism called “compartmentalization.” For example, when I am in the hospital, I shut down on business. When I am on my startup, I shut down on hospital work. (And alas, if I manage to get on a date, I shut down on everything else!) If your startup succeeds, you can then quit medicine. That is what Bill Gates and Mark Zukerberg did. The only renown person that actually quit school when he didn’t have a profitable venture was Steve Jobs. And he described it as being “a scary thing looking back!” Also, school is not just about learning, it is about building a network with like minds. Get to collaborate with others to ease the stress. You will be amazed what you guys could achieve when “you join your imaginations to a common purpose” (in the words of Barack Obama).
I hope this helps. Bid you God’s speed!
with you guys, i want to point out some key positives i took from these just incase anyone is in the same situation and you dont want to read every single reply