Third Shift Entrepreneur

Chapter 1The Lingering Discontent

The alarm rang at 5:15 a.m., but Matt had been restless for two hours, constantly jolting himself awake in a panicked state, thinking he'd missed his flight. He could never sleep before an early flight. He'd never missed one, but that didn't stop the anxiety.

He laid in bed for a few minutes, feeling the heaviness on his eyes. He had done these one-day business trips dozens of times before, but for some reason this one felt different, harder. Maybe it was that he was about to turn 40. Maybe it was because this client had rescheduled this meeting twice. Maybe it was because of the fight that he and Sabina had last night, the fight about which he couldn't even remember any of the details this morning other than that Sabina reminded him he instigated these kinds of fights-about-nothing regularly before business trips.

Maybe it was the last thing he'd seen on Facebook before he'd gone to sleep: his old business school friend Amit celebrating the sale of the company that he had started eight years ago. At the time, he thought that Amit was foolish for leaving a safe job to launch the new venture. He looked at the photos and the 127 comments that followed of Amit celebrating alongside his wife and what looked like a dozen or so of the company leaders toasting and laughing. Matt recalled a specific conversation with Amit when they were in an entrepreneurship class together in which they each had to develop a business idea. Amit had a different version ...