Keep The Dream Alive

I’m going to start this post by being completely honest with you : after the first Entrepreneurship class we had three weeks ago, I wasn’t really excited about it… To be even more honest, I was a bit disappointed. I took this course because I wanted to gain some actual knowledge and know-hows about venture creation: who exactly should I talk to to get money, what are the legal specifications I should be aware of, which exact steps should I follow to get my company on track? I had this feeling that none of these questions would be answered, and that I was going to waste my time trying to connect with people I don’t even know on LinkedIn, faking to care about start up events and preparing presentations on how I sold coffee on the street…

But then came Joakim Fohlman’s speech.

To keep on being honest, at first, I thought this was a pretty naive speech, explaining how we were all great minds in the room, with great ideas and a great future… But, as the speech was going on, I realized that I was actually directly touched by some of his words, and that all of this was deeply meaningful to me, especially the part about believing in ourselves and daring to take the “weird”, unusual and though path to build a future that really fits us.

To fully understand what this means to me, we have to go back a few years ago, during my graduation year in high school. This might sound childish, weird or even lame to some of you, but I had always been deeply passionate by video games. I’m not going to explain in details what I love about this media here (that would take hours to write and read), but this passion is so intense that I actually wanted to turn it into my job, and study game design. However, for several reasons, my parents didn’t exactly approve this choice, and I ended up in an engineering formation, which I thought was ok after all (many video games fan work in totally different areas, and their lifes are probably great anyway). However, a school long lasting project last year, and an intership as Project Manager in a company indirectly related to the video game area both led me to believe that I could still make my old dream come true, and go use my Industrial and Management skills in the video game industry.

Unfortunately, this path is not easy at all. First, my profile (industrial engineer) is definitely not what the recruiters are looking for. In addition, what I would really love to do is not project management, but to be part of the creative process (game design, scenario…), which makes it even harder given my formation. And finally, even if I make it, the salaries are much lower that in the companies I could work for as an industrial engineer.

Which takes me back directly to Joakim’s speech.

He reminded me of what was really important: doing the things we love and living a life we won’t regret. And the funny thing is that this actually refers to what Serdar said at the very end of the first class, after showing us the video of the guy dancing alone: “you may look crazy to other people, but at least you will enjoy the music”.

Now, I think I understand better the purpose of this class. This not about telling what to do, this is about giving us faith in our own projects and in ourselves, so we can figure out what to do ourselves. And suddenly, all the things mentionned above, that I thought useless, can actually really make sense depending on what you are looking for! I think we’ll all get different things from this class, depending on how much we invest in it, our goals and dreams, and, above all, what we actually want it to give us.

In any case, let’s just “enjoy the music” the way we like it!