I used to tell people that I retired for the first time when I was 28, and the second time when I was 30.

The first time, I'd made enough money that I didn't want to work a regular 9 to 5 and climb the career ladder anymore. Not even with a US salary in the Bay Area and an H1B locked in. It just wasn't worth it to me. So I took a break. And as luck would have it, I was already building a startup on the side, so when I came back to India I jumped straight into that.

You could argue I worked twice as hard at the startup as I ever did at my job. I barely slept. I slept at the office for a lot of nights. I wasn't very healthy. But in two years I learned so much and got so much done, and it was absolutely amazing fun. It was a lot of work, and it made the risk feel worth it.

Then, suddenly, I'd sold the company, and I didn't even want to do that anymore. I wanted to do something different. So I started training jiu-jitsu.

I could do that because I could take something called unemployment risk. I'd made enough money that I had at least a good decade of runway before I'd need a job again.

People often confuse that with the reason to do a startup. It isn't, not at all. Having done one accidentally, and tried a few more unsuccessfully, I don't think a startup is for everyone. There's a huge difference between unemployment risk and business risk.

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Having recently married into a Marwadi family, I understand now what it takes to build a business. Not just a startup, but a small-scale business, even a medium-scale one. And I know a lot of people who do it. Friends who own gyms. Friends who are artist managers. A friend who runs a bakery, another who runs a momo shop. My mom used to run a consulting service. My wife runs a marketing agency. My father-in-law runs a tea brand and is now starting a snacks brand.

Business risk means a lot of things unemployment risk doesn't.

Will you be deluded enough, and convicted enough about your mission, to keep working on it even on the bad days?

Will you work alone, through a plethora of people who come and go, while you stay strong, hold your ground and build that business?

Will you work through the disagreements with your co-founders - and trust me, there will be a lot - because you've both taken enough risk that the larger mission matters more than whatever you're squabbling about?

Will you put enough time into your business or your cause, a few years at least, before you expect to see anything?

And if, by that small chance, it does become successful someday, will you be okay enough to just smile and brush it off your shoulders when people tell you "oh, you got lucky", or "oh my God, you're so successful", and smirk when they think they could do that too?

There's a gap between unemployment risk and business risk. Quitting your job and wanting to start a business are two very different things. I think a lot of Indians made that mistake in the last decade. They said, I'd rather take a bigger risk and build my own business, because I don't like what my job has to offer. I did that too, and trust me, I learned the hard way that building a business isn't for everyone.

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That said, when I did take the unemployment risk and tried my hand at so many businesses, and didn't make all of them work, I learned a lot. And there's one mantra I've come out of it with.

Think of it like farming. You're sowing seeds, watering the crop, nurturing the soil. You do it steadily, with discipline, day after day, season through season, for about a year before you expect any harvest. And even then, for so many reasons that have nothing to do with you and that you can't possibly control, the yield might be low. The crops might just die. They might be infested with pests. Or, by some miracle, you get the yield out, and you just about break even.

I'm not being dramatic. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks this: of the businesses born in 2013, about half were still around five years later, and only a third made it to ten.

It's not as shiny as the grass-is-greener version, where this is obviously better than a job.

Honestly, if I'd stuck to my job these last five years, I might have made close to as much money climbing the career ladder. Turns out that's not just me. Back in 2000, an economist called Barton Hamilton looked at the returns to self-employment and found most people who go into business earn less than they would in a job, both when they start and as the years go on. After ten years in business, the median gap was 35%. And they stay anyway. I'd have learned different things. But I wouldn't have learned these things, and that was important to me. It still is.

So I sow seeds now. Whether they grow or not, whether they turn into any yield or not, I enjoy being the farmer. A humble farmer, enjoying the work, very in tune with nature - which, in this analogy, is the markets. I understand a lot more of the world than I used to. And I understand a lot more about my life and myself, which is even more important to me, and defines a little bit of who I am.

So please don't fall for the grass-is-greener fallacy. There's a huge gap between unemployment risk and business risk. As most founders will tell you, don't quit your 9 to 5. If you want to build a business, do it in your 5 to 9, for a long, long time. There's research behind that too. Joseph Raffiee and Jie Feng followed people over fourteen years and found that the ones who started their business while keeping their day job were about a third less likely to fail than the ones who quit to go all in. And when you see it going somewhere, and you have the appetite for the risk, don't ask people. Just do it. But only if you're ready to face the consequences, and be at peace whatever happens.

Good luck to you. I hope I didn't talk you out of it :P