The Long Walk Away from Certainty

Last year, I walked away from a comfortable job, a predictable salary, people who I know and who know me, and the familiar rhythm of meetings, culture, and clarity into the shoes of being an entrepreneur. It was not a dramatic exit, just a quiet acknowledgement of a truth that I had been postponing.

What they don’t tell you is that the moment you step away from certainty, time stretches unnervingly. The distance between effort and outcome becomes elastic. And still, you stay because something deeper than logic keeps you there.

There is no formal training for this life, and you learn by doing. You scramble, connect fragments, read, watch others who seem to know more, and still move forward, unsure if you are walking or stumbling.

Every day demands learning unfamiliar work, roles dissolve, and you become everything at once, thinking, building, testing, negotiating, selling, marketing, analysing etc. Resources deplete. Not just money, but energy, certainty, and occasionally confidence. You begin to understand that every decision carries a consequence. Some are visible. Others reveal themselves slowly, months later.

This is the part of entrepreneurship rarely acknowledged. It is not always about speed or bravado. Often, it is about sitting with uncertainty and choosing to continue anyway. Entrepreneurship mirrors life in itself. It unfolds one step at a time, and what makes the journey beautiful is the team that stands beside you, bound by a shared belief that together, we will make it. The learning is immense, and the pride comes from resilience and optimism.

India today celebrates startups with pride and rightly so. But beneath the headlines lies a quieter story of individuals who choose delayed clarity over immediate comfort, who traded certainty for possibility, and who build not because success is guaranteed, but because not building feels like a greater loss.

On National Startup Day, perhaps it is worth remembering this version of the founder, not the one holding a cheque, but the one holding on, not the one who made it, but the one still making sense of it all. The one who fails today and tries the next day. 

Because long before success becomes visible, entrepreneurship is simply this: A long walk away from certainty, taking one deliberate step at a time.

Gayathri Krishnan: Co-Founder, Reelwise Entertainment Private Limited