You have a diploma, you have debt, and you have a bucketful of optimism. It is the recipe to start your own business. Society says that you should get into a safe job with Deloitte or Google before you start anything. Screw that.
It is a scary thing to start right after college. Here is your ace-in-the-hole: low overheads. Until now, you have not been investing in real estate and you have not been having children yet. So you have got some buffer room to eat ramen for half a year and create a Shopify shop. This is the key advantage compared to any 401k match.
The first step is the hardest – admit that you do not have any great original idea. Actually, most of the founders were doing exactly that – replicate an idea which already succeeded somewhere else. Check out what sells on Etsy and Amazon and try to create an improved version of it. Originality is a trap, execution is what gets the bills paid.
Do not quit your comfortable job until you have enough funds to survive half a year. It may sound crazy, but yes, a job, even the one like bartender. You need cash flow to make decisions in a rational way and not out of necessity.
Forget about fancy LLC structures, lawyers, and any other nonsense in the first few months. Maybe use some Stripe Atlas and Clerky. Sole Proprietorship is perfectly fine. Spending $500 on a logo design on Fiverr is absolutely stupid idea if you do not have any clients. Better spend the same money to validate your product through Facebook Ads.
Validation is critical. If you cannot sell it until you create, you are playing business. Create a landing page using Carrd and run there $50 of Facebook Ads. No clicks? Change your idea immediately.
Network is your net worth – cliché, but still the truth. Find founders whose ideas you like and contact them through cold emails. Offer them 15 minutes of your time. They will definitely agree to have a chat with you since everybody loves to talk about themselves.
You will be killed with taxes. Allocate 30 percent of each dollar you earn and do not use it. You may consider yourself a visionary founder, but IRS does not care much about it.
You will experience imposter syndrome which will strike the hardest at age 23. Take the CEO title, confidence beats competence in the early-stage.
Working in a company you dislike is a bigger risk than failing your startup. At least, in your case, you will keep the equity. Build something.