Ask HN: How does it feel to be founder of a popular Startup?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4963841

by zeynalli • 14 years ago

28 30 14 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Most of us are here to learn about startups, to motivate us following other entrepreneurs and inspire us. We always dream and think right before we sleep, how would it be if my startup will be successful, what will change, will I be still same person, should I work less or even more etc. So how does it feel? What did change in your life?

loceng2• 14 years ago

I imagine it shouldn't really affect you more than that the success is a form of validation for your theories, work, efforts.

Firehed• 14 years ago

Or you let it go to your head, get cocky and start assuming that you can do no wrong, and start making stupid decisions that lead you and your company to failure and bankruptcy.

It will affect everyone differently. But I imagine the folks that see ongoing success are the ones best realizing what worked and what didn't and continue to execute on successful concepts while scratching stuff as it becomes less effective.

loceng2• 14 years ago

Good point. I guess I had my blinders on for how I hope to react / maintain focus on what's important.

kloncks• 14 years ago

Someone once told me that success and fame don't change a person. They merely amplify that person's qualities; you're still the same person.

Also. One of the advantages of Silicon Valley being an insular bubble at times is that however successful you might be, there's someone within a few square miles who has accomplished more. It's easy to get constantly humbled.

For every Drew Houston there's a Mark Pincus and for every Mark Pincus there's a Bill Campbell.

Obviously take everything I say here as just my own personal experience and my company is very very very early. But these are just some personal notes & thoughts.

gojomo2• 14 years ago

And for every Houston, Pincus, and Campbell, there's a McAfee.

sutro• 14 years ago

Would that there were more McAfees.

sontek2• 14 years ago

and for every McAfee there is a Larry Page

spartango• 14 years ago

There's almost certainly a distinction to be made between a "popular" and "successful" startup; there are startups that are successful but hardly popular, and vice-versa.

People in the popular state tend to have the challenges of handling fame; when pushed into the spotlight, managing one's image becomes a challenge (among the others of a business).

People in the successful state tend to have a slightly different set of pressures; past success doesn't guarantee future success, so maintaining business growth and product development sit on your mind.

Of course, there are folks at the intersection of these two groups, and you can imagine that they have both sets of pressures, and perhaps some new ones as well.

catshirt• 14 years ago

if you fall asleep wondering about how success will change your life you're not thinking about the right things

acgourley• 14 years ago

Most aspiring entrepreneurs are convinced their life will be 100x better when they get funding and "make it." This is because they do not spend enough time thinking it through. If they did, they'd puzzle out that having a big chunk of money land in their lap solves few of their main problems, and creates a bunch more.

So yes, thinking it through once or twice is a good idea, and something most people don't do.

mahesh_rm3• 14 years ago

In noticing this sort of "Ask HNs" makes it easily to the front page while these other sorts of "Ask HNs" [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4961812] don't get a single comment, I wonder whether HN might effectively be of some help to youngster industrial disenchanted folks. In a serious and genuinely totally non-trolling way.

runawaybottle• 14 years ago

There's also the steady stream of "how to live life" posts, exercise more, travel more, listen more, balance your life more, and so on. I think there's definitely a certain pressure this community puts on itself, and it constantly shows up in threads like this one. What's it like to be successful? Is it going to make you feel better about today?

spullara• 14 years ago

It is possible that no one the community knows the answer or possibly that there is no correct answer for the question. Generally I think a question like that should be on an appropriate stackoverflow or quora topic. HN questions should leverage the group intelligence rather than searching for the veritable answer in a haystack.

mahesh_rm3• 14 years ago

"HN questions should leverage the group intelligence rather than searching for the veritable answer in a haystack."

Assuming intelligence is "an adaptation… To say that intelligence is a particular instance of biological adaptation is thus to suppose that it is essentially an organization and that its function is to structure the universe just as the organism structures its immediate environment" I do not see a best way to "leverage the group intelligence" than helping community members to adapt.

I did not ask for "the veritable answer in a haystack", but for some experiences and suggestions regarding how to proceed.

"no one the community knows the answer"

I also find it difficult to believe a community of entrepreneurs, like HN is, does not possess the right knowledge to give its 2cents on this.

rex_gsd• 14 years ago

As a long time lurker I was in a prime position to answer that, so I made an account and did. Setting up USD processing as a non US citizen is a big PITA

onlyup• 14 years ago

For those that didn't notice, the post mahesh_rm linked to is his own.

tomasien• 14 years ago

I can understand the urge to comment here, but if you don't have an answer from personal experience OR can site someone else's experience (a Quora answer, etc), let's keep the clutter off so that the real answers can shine through.

tgrass• 14 years ago

The upvote and downvotes buttons are intended to serve this function.

georgemcbay2• 14 years ago

By the logic of your own post, I should downvote it... (but I didn't).

axiom• 14 years ago

You still feel inadequate because you're not as successful as some even more successful startups.

You still feel insanely stressed because there's even more at stake now.

You still wonder if you're working on the right thing.

I dunno. Things don't really change much honestly.

jacquesm• 14 years ago

As an ex-ceo of an at the time very popular startup I think that maybe I'm qualified to answer this, taking into account that this is just one viewpoint of a very complex and multi-faceted issue. At some point in time the company I founded held a spot in the top 300 websites.

To answer your question directly: It felt absolutely terrible. I had no idea on how to gain control of the wild horse that had left the stable unsaddled, with a jockey that was about as unprepared as could be. We did the best we could. We missed critical time-slots, dealt with all kinds of trouble as good as we could all the time knowing that we could - and should - do better.

Being CEO of such a company (at the peak > 20 employees on two continents) was more responsibility than I had bargained for. It took away time from those dearest to me, it stressed me out beyond belief and it gave me more experience in a few years than I'd built up in the decade before, both in a business sense and in a technology sense.

It made me weary of people, when you're having that level of success (newspaper cover photographs, TV appearances, the works) business wise you gain the attention of a lot of nice people, but also of a lot of not-so-nice people. They can be extremely hard to tell apart.

Suddenly you're responsible for two orders of magnitude more money than you've ever dealt with in your life. You worry more about your ability to pay your employees than you worry about your own health.

I could go on like that for a bit. Let's just leave it at if it wasn't planned that you were founder of a popular start-up it can wreck your life really well. Better make it something that you're aiming for consciously, then at least you will be somewhat prepared for the journey.

I would definitely not want to go through such a period of hyper growth without a means to control it again, I'm all for controlling the situation and maybe ending up a bit less successful than to end up investing too much of my most precious resource (time) into a company. Any company.

The price on other fronts is too high, which of course is a personal feeling but it is definitely where I stand today. That doesn't mean that I wouldn't want to be part of a success story, it means that I no longer want to be in an out-of-control situation and that I'll work really hard to maintain control, even if that's at the expense of some growth. I think in the longer term that that benefits everybody.

adambenayoun• 14 years ago

Jacques - thanks for sharing this.

Although I'm not successful yet, I can relate strongly with something you wrote (as a CEO):

> You worry more about your ability to pay your employees than you worry about your own health.

When you are the CEO of a business - any business, you have ton of worries. I can only think that when you become 'popular' or 'successful', these worries just increase and you somehow dont have the time to savor the moment.

Ask HN: How does it feel to be founder of a popular Startup?

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