I just found out that I make $6/hour as an engineer in a company who’s annual rev is over $1B. What ‘s pissing me off is that I spend $12/day for the ride home in a taxi. Thinking about starting up but I still don’t have the balls for it.

When I started my first company in India, I was 19, college dropout with $2K in my bank account. I saved that money while my college time by building websites for small business.

After dropping out the college, I tried to scale up the business, I had few lucky months and few bad ones. Later I started attending startup events, I met few guys a billion dollar idea and I joined with them. I worked with them around 15 months on many billion dollar ideas. But my bad luck, none of them got any real users.

Later I started as a freelancer and I made an average of $5k per month and I had good work life balance.

I don’t have any work experience with billion dollar companies, But the salary they are paying is purely depends on your market. If they can easily replace you, the won’t pay you much.

I learned many things in my journey (I’m 23 now) and I’m joining one of the hot Indian startup from the next month. They offered me around $50K, but I think I can learn many things while working with them.

You are 25, have work experience with big companies and know English. Do you know why they are not offering higher salary? Do you know what are the missing skills?

since you have a stable job, find your self, learn new skills and fill the missing gap. You can even join in any NGO as volunteer. Build network and learn skills.

Then join in a funded startup as employee, you can learn a lot without spending money.

Build a plan and start your company in 1 or 2 years.

Start following your passion, not the money.

All the best!