“I will never work for anyone else ever again.”
Those words are fairly common for someone who is self-employed — either as a freelancer, independent contractor, entrepreneur, or principal in a startup. After all, once a person gets a taste of freedom, it’s hard to put them back in a cage again. At least, that’s how many view it. But is that truly the case? Does going out on your own really offer the independence most self-starters dream of? We talked to six people who’ve done it to see what they have to say about three supposed freedoms enjoyed by entrepreneurs.
“Running your own business is how you make the best money.”
For an entrepreneur, there’s nothing like the high that comes with investment money. Nikke Linnansalo was an early joiner at a startup. “The first six months were like a honeymoon,” he says. “It seemed as if there was enough money that we could do whatever we wanted. It felt like we were conquering the world.”
It wasn’t until about a year later that the money dried up and the stress appeared. At that point, the question was no longer, “What are we going to do with all this money?” and more like “Will I get paid?”
In a sense, entrepreneurs are always up against the clock. Tuomas Arokanto helped launch a startup after more than 15 years working at different companies and then in a government job. “When I worked for the government, everything took so long,” he says. “But at the startup, we had the opposite problem. We always had to be aware of the money. And because of that, we needed to deliver something fast and cut corners, meaning the product suffered.”
In 1999, Karri-Pekka Laakso started a consulting company that specialized in UI design. Even though he and his partner were the sole owners of the business and there were no investors involved, he found the financial side troublesome, too. “Until you have a robust, big enough business, it’s hard to predict how much money you will get over the next month, year, and so on. So you have to be conservative with spending and learn how to manage the money,” says Karri-Pekka.
The feast or famine predicament can eventually wear on you — especially during uncertain economic times like we’re living in. Anna Harrington freelanced and then co-founded a small software agency in the U.S. At the start of 2022, she began seeing her larger clients slowing down with project work. Then, some of the startups she was doing work for couldn’t get the investments they needed. “As an entrepreneur, I’d always felt the internal pressure of opportunity loss,” says Anna. “But when my clients started facing their own economic issues, it was way worse. I was constantly worried that if I wasn’t working, then I wasn’t growing the business and leaving money on the table.”
And that gets us to our next point.
“With my business, I get to decide when I work.”
The idea that you can set your schedule is another factor that convinces people to venture out on their own. “I took a four month vacation every two years when I had my own business,” says Antti Pohjola, who did freelance consulting. But that’s certainly not the case for everyone.
“Vacation? What vacation?” asks Anna. “When you work for yourself, that’s what you imagine — that you’ll get to do what you want whenever you want. But it’s just not the case. Lots of times, you’re loaded down with work, and when you’re not, you’re still always on call. So even if the hours per week aren’t that bad, it means taking a phone call at night or answering an email on the weekend.”
“When you work for yourself, you really need to be mentally prepared for the pressures of balancing home life and work life,” says Tuomas. “When I was still an employee, they made me the technical lead, and I burned out. So when I went to the startup, I wasn’t willing to sacrifice my wellbeing for that venture. But many people choose differently and end up paying the consequences.”
In fact, that’s why Antti went back to his consulting business. For a while, he was a principal in a startup, and the grind drove him very close to burnout. Nikke’s experience at his startup was the catalyst for his change in careers, too. “It was a lot of work, and I was tired,” he recalls. “So, I started looking for an environment where I could find a better work/life balance.”
“If I’m the boss, no one can tell me what to do.”
Jesse Luoto worked at a couple of advertising agencies before he ventured into the startup world. One of the reasons for that was the independence it offered. “At the ad agencies I worked for, a very common policy was that if you wanted to do a side project that was even remotely connected to your day job, you had to get permission,” he remembers. “And that could take months. I mean, that’s madness. I didn’t think it was fair that someone else could dictate what I did with my free time.”
Later, when he worked for a startup, he and his co-founders called the shots and did what they wanted. Once the venture financially collapsed, Jesse knew he couldn’t go to a huge corporation with a lot of middle management watching over him. “I just imagined someone saying to me, ‘Okay, here are three tickets in Jira specified for you for the next week. Let me know when they’re done.’ It just seemed so dysfunctional — and not for me.”
Anna was also trying to escape traditional occupational hierarchy. “When I started out on my own,” she says, “it was basically to avoid the rigid structure of most corporations. I didn’t want to be stuck as a junior developer doing grunt work until I ‘worked my way up’ in the company. I figured if I worked for myself, I could have ownership of my projects, deal directly with the clients, get more experience, and ramp up my learnings really quickly.”
But that type of autonomy comes at a cost, too. Many times, entrepreneurship requires one person to wear many different hats outside of their core skills and professional interests. Not only is she or he the technical lead, but also the bookkeeper, recruiter, and sales person. The context switching can be exhausting. And if the entrepreneur isn’t particularly skilled in one of those areas, or simply doesn’t like it, the business suffers.
Sometimes entrepreneurship has built-in autonomy because there are literally no co-workers. That’s what started to affect Antti. “I would go into a client’s office as a solo freelancer, and I was definitely an outsider,” he recalls. “It started feeling pretty lonely. Christmas parties were me and my girlfriend at a restaurant.” But it wasn’t just social isolation he felt, it was also professional. “I had no one to push me technologically,” Antti says.
Even though Tuomas had other partners at his startup, he sometimes felt like he was flying solo, too. “I was the only tech guy, so I had to handle every single problem by myself. I began to feel like I was totally alone in that sense.”
Nikke was in a similar position. “I was responsible for many of the architectural choices for the software we were building,” he says. “But I didn’t know if I was making the right decisions. I was just doing the best I could. I really wanted to be better at my job. It’s just that there was no one else to really learn from in that setting — no way to grow.”
Anna thought going on her own would speed up her advancement, but she soon found out that wasn’t the case. “I realized I was only learning what I was able to sell,” she says. “Plus, I missed the knowledge sharing. In an industry like tech, you really need colleagues to make sure you’re keeping up with all the new developments in the field. You don’t want to be in a bubble.”
So is occupational freedom elusive? Is the whole idea of not being trapped in a job — whether you work for someone else or yourself — just a fantasy? The six now former self-employed people above, who instead work at Reaktor, will tell you “no.”
Something more important than money
Antti says, “I’ll admit, I was a little worried about the money, because when I started my own consultancy, I went after the projects where I would get paid well. I didn’t care what they were. And that was good for a while, but then after about three years it started feeling pretty aimless.”
Karri agrees. “I actually think I am paid pretty well at Reaktor. I’ve never compared my current salary to what I made as an entrepreneur. But that wasn’t the most important thing for me then anyway. What I’ve always cared about more is having meaningful work. And at Reaktor, I get to work on really interesting projects.”
In fact, as a whole, Reaktor values impact over income. We don’t always say yes to a project just because it will be a revenue source. We want to be able to stand behind the project and believe in it. It’s not all about money.
“I think that is something that resonates with entrepreneurs, because typically with startups it is all about the money,” says Tuomas. “And that can be a major problem. If you don’t have the investment, then everything will collapse pretty fast. So you need to go where the money is.”
Antti says one of the things that really drew him to Reaktor was that we are selective with the projects we take on. And since one of his startups involved sustainability, he’s excited to jump on something in that area soon. That’s a luxury not many entrepreneurs have — the opportunity to explore different industries or interests. Business owners, especially ones just starting out, have to be laser focused. Any distraction, like a side hustle or a pet project, can have a negative impact. But at Reaktor, consultants can choose what they want to do. And then when they feel they want to move on, they move on.
“In fact,” says Nikke, “when you start working at Reaktor, nobody’s going to tell you you’re going to work on this for the next 12 months. You’re expected to go and find something in our project pool that’s interesting to you. That’s like an entrepreneur’s dream! You can feed your curiosity with none of the risks.”
A true work/life balance
At Reaktor, it’s not expected — or desired — for our employees to be at their computers day in and day out. So if a developer or designer goes over their regular hours, we give them back that time. To refresh and recharge, we encourage everyone to pursue hobbies and passions and have many clubs and activities within the company so they can do so.
It’s only been a few months since she moved from New York City to Colorado, but Anna is thrilled with the new possibilities before her. “Now that I’m at Reaktor and have a real eight-hour workday, I’m so excited to actually explore where I live!” she exclaims. “Since I’m an early riser (or at least my dog is), I finish with enough time to hike the mountains.”
“I used to feel like I was working all the time,” says Nikke. “But now, when my day’s over, I just close my laptop and that’s it.” That lack of pressure has had an unexpected impact on him. “These days, I’m way more inspired to actually work on my own coding projects in my spare time. That was something I completely lost during the years I worked in a startup. But now, sometimes I just want to relax and code, and I’m really happy to have that feeling again.”
Those who have other responsibilities also appreciate the lack of pressure. “I have two young kids,” says Jesse, “so they deserve my time. And Reaktor lets me do that by creating a stress-free environment. The problems we’re trying to solve for our clients are part of our job, of course, but it’s not anything we’re supposed to lose sleep over. And that makes it really easy to have a good work/life balance, which in turn leads to better work overall.”
The power to make your own decisions & the support of a team
For those who haven’t had a boss in a while, coming under the thumb of any company can be nerve racking. Anna remembers, “Even though I researched Reaktor on the website and I loved the culture and it was really reassuring to talk to people during my interviews, I was still really nervous. Like, ‘Am I going to feel constricted? Am I going to feel like I need to check in with everybody constantly?’ I just wasn’t sure if the constraints of being an employee were going to be more overwhelming than I expected.”
But when she arrived, her fears were put at ease. The best way to describe how Reaktor embraces autonomy and self organization is through the Advice Process. It basically allows anyone to make a decision after receiving feedback from others (people who would be affected and experts) and using common sense. That’s what made Nikke feel comfortable about making the switch. “I’m trusted to make my own choices,” he says. “If I think it’s good for me and good for the organization, then I don’t need to get permission from others to do it.”
At the same time, even while Reaktorians have great autonomy, they’re still part of a team, which has helped Jesse. “I’ve known some entrepreneurs that were doing everything by themselves, and that ate into every part of their lives,” he says. “But at Reaktor, we have the mentality of working inside a team. So it’s not your sole responsibility to handle everything.”
In fact, many people apply because of the people who become their co-workers. “My main motivation for coming to Reaktor was I knew there were a lot of really talented people working here,” says Nikke. “And not only do they have knowledge, but they’re friendly and willing to share it.”
Anna has noticed this, too, “At other places, you’ll ask a question and they’ll say, ‘I’m not your mentor,’ or ‘figure it out on your own,’ or ‘you should already know that.’ It creates a really toxic environment. Here, they’re happy to help you out.” Plus, Reaktor is continually growing, so there is always someone new to learn from.
There’s another benefit, too, from not working alone. Antti says, “When you work for yourself, no one fills in for you when you’re gone. The work is always waiting. But there’s also no one watching out for you, either.” He saw a stark contrast to that recently when he suffered several bouts of illness back-to-back. “There was a month where I had to take a bunch of sick days,” he relates. “And all of a sudden I had a Slack message from the HR team asking if everything was okay. You just don’t get that working for yourself.”
Reaktorians decide for themselves where their careers take them. They’re encouraged to get involved in what interests them. And former entrepreneurs who like wearing different hats can still do that. They don’t have to give it up. The point is, working for us, they do it because they want to do it, not because they have to do it.
Horizontal growth is a big part of Reaktor. Karri, who has been with Reaktor since 2005, has taken advantage of that. As the first designer we hired, he focused on that at the beginning, but then he did some sales and recruiting, and now he’s doing mostly coding in his project work, as well as some training. He says, “All of these different things are interesting to me, but I couldn’t just pick and choose what I wanted to do as an entrepreneur like I can here. I’ve really enjoyed making full use of this freedom and these possibilities.”
“This sweet spot where you have a lot of freedom, but not all the responsibility.”
Starting a business, going out on one’s own, launching a startup — these all require a certain combination of qualities: courage mixed with curiosity, aptitude combined with a willingness to do anything, drive alongside vision. But those same characteristics are just as useful working for a company — as long as it’s the right one.
There’s a reason the people mentioned above were comfortable leaving their own business to work for Reaktor. It’s because we’ve created an environment where there is actual freedom. Nikke says, “I joined a startup because I was interested in doing something from the ground up, taking ownership of it, and working with people I liked. But that’s what I find at Reaktor, too.”
There is one freedom most entrepreneurs don’t allow themselves — the freedom to fail. If they did, they might be more willing to take greater risks and try new things. But lots of times, they view the cost as too great — not only financially, but emotionally. Owning a business, after all, is very personal. And if that business fails, then many times the person behind it feels like a failure. But we see things differently at Reaktor. Jesse explains, “If things don’t work out on a project, we don’t view it as a failure. It’s just that it didn’t go as planned. So, we start experimenting again and look at the problem from another angle.”
When people embrace this mentality, it has a really positive effect overall. “The leeway we’re given at Reaktor is the perfect setting for people who want to take risks and make bold moves,” says Karri. “And we’ve seen throughout history that most of these have turned out quite well.”
It’s turned out well for Reaktor — which benefits from the experience, drive, and curiosity of this unique talent pool — and it’s turned out well for the entrepreneurs themselves, who have finally found a place that feels like home. Nikke concludes, “This is the first company I’ve worked for that I could see myself staying at for a while. It’s just this sweet spot where you have a lot of freedom, but not all the responsibility.”
