How You Know You've Created the Company of Your Dreams

You don’t become an entrepreneur because it’s easy or convenient. You decide to start your own business because you want your life to be meaningful, because you want to feel like your life has a purpose, because you are trying to build something bigger than yourself.

What does that feel like? How does it feel to chase -- and achieve -- your dream? How do you know that you are heading in the right direction?
Finding your purpose doesn’t always come with a parade and a champagne celebration. Sometimes it appears as a quiet, simple moment. That’s how it was for Adrian Gradinaru, co-founder of New York City-based boat rental marketplace Sailo. The website allows people to search, compare and book boats online.

Earlier this summer, Gradinaru was heading home one night this summer, walking through New York City after a long day at work, when he realized he truly was doing work that provided him a sense of purpose. “I felt this interior calm that was sort of amazing,” says Gradinaru. “It’s not about money, it’s not about profit, I feel like we are providing a service that people are actually using and they are enjoying it.”
For one of the other co-founders, that moment of clarity came in the form of a phone call.
“One of our customers called us, this was somebody we didn’t know, and they just told us that they had had the best day [of] their life. And we had created a company that provided the best day of people’s lives and that’s ultimately why we started it,” says Delphine Braas, another co-founder of Sailo.
To learn more about Sailo, and hear the co-founders talk about how it feels to discover a sense of purpose through your work, watch the video above.