Why?

Week one was a blur. No fancy speeches by the directors, no welcome programme and no facilitated networking sessions — we started the venture building programme hitting the ground running with a short introduction followed by classes from 9 to 6.

Credit where it is due though, it did stick to the spirit of entrepreneurship; that nobody owes us anything and if we wanted to succeed, we had to reach out and grab it.

Thankfully, there were allocated times for participants to share their ideas. It was eye-opening as a first-time entrepreneur seeing people of all ages and backgrounds in the same zoom, ranging from fresh grads like Pam and I to someone in his 70s starting a journey he had long-wanted to embark on.

While assessing all the ideas put forth though, I caught myself posing a question internally and repeatedly: why? Why is he entering the medical sector? Why is he pushing for integration in the gaming industry? Why is she so passionate about healthy bentos? Why are they here? More importantly, why am I here?

The question of why would later be asked throughout the week by my co-founder Pam. To me. Repeatedly. Despite working together for nearly half a year. As someone who is not inclined towards inquisitiveness, this soon got on my nerves a little. Besides, this was not the first time I had been barraged by these questions.

Yet even though the questions were the same, I found myself giving slightly different answers compared to when we first started working together.

You see, I realised that there is nothing wrong, heck, even necessary to constantly ask ourselves this question throughout the journey of entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship, after all, is a journey of discovery.

Why is the customer willing to pay for our product? Why should investors put money into our startup? Why does my business exist? At every stage of development, asking myself why is key to unlocking the potential of the business not because it spurs innovation nor demand for products, but because it induces self awareness.

Simon Sinek, author of the bestselling book Start With Why, further outlines that the process of finding my why is a “process of discovery, not invention”; not a process of outward reflection or external creation, but from looking within.

And it is this self awareness which, when nurtured and grown, answers everything else.

It’s the end of week 1. I don’t have all the answers to the whys yet, but I’m hella excited to find out.