Finding My Niche in the World

The other day I was having a conversation with my sister’s friend who is about to graduate from college. She was explaining to me how for the entirety of college she had studied marketing and international business without knowing what she wanted to do with her life. At the beginning of her senior year, she had decided, with the support from her family, that law school was the “right thing” for her. She proceeded to spend hours on hours studying for the LSAT and took the exam in September. Yet upon reviewing her score, she was not happy and felt uneasy. It wasn’t what she wanted, it wasn’t the score she had trained for, and now she was stuck trying to figure out what her true passions are and where she fits into this world.

This experience is not unique to her alone. This series of events happens to so many people in their senior years of college, on the brink of the real world. Throughout individual’s lives, from picking a college to picking a major to landing a job to changing jobs, everything is about figuring out how an individual fits into this big world and what their little niche is. This got me thinking… this relevant idea is so applicable to startups.  In the startup world, we talk about product-market fit like it is some holy state of mind to achieve. When you find product-market fit it means your ready to grow your business and scale.  Yet, finding it can be extremely difficult. It is akin to finding the little Jesus somewhere in a big birthday cake; surely it exists, but you have to dig and dig to find it.

I know I haven’t found product-market fit yet with my startup, but I have a good hypothesis of how to get there. Each day I strive to validate my assumptions and turn my hypothesis into evidence. For my sister’s friend, she is on the same path. Learning more each day, exploring and talking with people to find her passion and career fit. Just like in the startup world investors are ruthless about this question, in the real world friends and families can be ruthless. Supportive, yet pushy and naggy till you find “the fit.” As I have been on this journey, I don’t know all the answers, but do believe that it takes 3 main things:

1. Understanding of where you are and where you are trying to go
2. Alignment of what you can and can’t control
3. Attacking an opportunity when it arises and trusting your gut that this is the one