Leaving Microsoft

It's official. I've decided to leave Microsoft.

The past 25 months have given me a great opportunity to learn and grow, while working for one of the best software companies in the world.

But alas, the time has come again to change things up, take on some risk, and start a new adventure. In just a week, I'll be moving down to LA to bootstrap a startup with Jeff, a friend from college who recently finished his Masters and with whom I worked on the mates project several years back (and as a sidenote, he's been up to some pretty cool stuff since!).

We won't be working on location-based social networking or flying robots, but it's a little too soon to share our plans just yet.

With that, I leave you with some pmarca words of wisdom...

First, and most importantly, realize that a startup puts you on an emotional rollercoaster unlike anything you have ever experienced.

You will flip rapidly from a day in which you are euphorically convinced you are going to own the world, to a day in which doom seems only weeks away and you feel completely ruined, and back again.

Over and over and over.

And I'm talking about what happens to stable entrepreneurs.

There is so much uncertainty and so much risk around practically everything you are doing. Will the product ship on time? Will it be fast enough? Will it have too many bugs? Will it be easy to use? Will anyone use it? Will your competitor beat you to market? Will you get any press coverage? Will anyone invest in the company? Will that key new engineer join? Will your key user interface designer quit and go to Google? And on and on and on...

Some days things will go really well and some things will go really poorly. And the level of stress that you're under generally will magnify those transient data points into incredible highs and unbelievable lows at whiplash speed and huge magnitude.

Sound like fun?

Absolutely.