Brutal Realities of Being a Founder

http://getfireplug.com/blog2013/05/10/5-things-founder-willing-talk-about/

by btrautsc • 13 years ago

13 9 13 years ago

mindcrime3• 13 years ago

No doubt. Being a startup founder is a f%@#ng nightmare. Fear, doubt, anxiety and stress are your constant companions... and pretty much your only companions. Nobody else understands what you're talking about even if you do get somebody to listen to you babble. Every time you glance at Hacker News, or Google News, or Twitter you're seeing something about one of your competitors: getting funding, landing a big new deal, announcing a new product, etc. Nobody wants to return your calls or answer your emails, and all the people from various entrepreneurial support groups who supposedly exist to "help" entrepreneurs also don't understand what you're doing. Angel investors roll their eyes when you try to explain why your thing is going to work. VC guys will talk to you, only because they're hedging their bets in case you do actually manage to get some traction. Servers crash, there's 2000x more work to be done than time to do it... the guy at Fedex Kinkos even thinks you're crazy and starts giving you business advice when you go pickup the latest batch of brochures. The waitress at the restaurant asks you why you don't "pivot" to a better business model. Your dog thinks you must be insane to keep going. You wake up in a cold-sweat thinking about the crisis of the day and trying to figure out how to make the impossible happen with no resources. The other startup founders you meet at "startup happy hour" events are all working on inane "cat picture social network" sites and can't have an informed conversation with you about your "Semantic Web and Social Networking For The Enterprise" startup. You'd have to be insane to keep doing this. You try to signup for a subscription at Hoovers.com but they don't do online signups anymore, forcing you to call and talk to somebody for a brain-dead simple transaction. Code that compiled perfectly fine yesterday won't compile today and you know damn well you haven't changed anything. You have nightmares about IBM launching a product that does what your thing does. Dating? You haven't had time to think about dating since Christopher Eccleston was playing The Doctor. You wonder, did your subscription to Triangle Business Journal just expire? Can you afford to renew it? Your $DAYJOB boss won't quit reminding you that "startups are a lottery and you probably won't win". You check the latest Hacker News post and it's filled with people talking about how all success just comes down to luck, and mocking the idiots who think they can actually influence events. Random people at Barnes & Noble are silently judging you as you sit there with your coffee and code... staring with their ghastly, pale faces, mocking you with their grotesque eyes, damning you with those horrible, hollow, eldritch eyes... the eyes, My GOd Th3 3yes!%&#&(()&@&$#@+%^HNO CARRIER

And then you realize that you wouldn't trade it for anything in the world. Because at least you don't have some jackoff $BOSS leering at you going "Sooooooo, Peter, how's it going? You did get the memo about the new coversheets for the TPS reports, right"??? And you know that at least, win, lose, or draw, that you did it your way, and that you gave yourself a fighting chance at putting yourself in control of your own life. And because whether or succeed or fail, you learned valuable lessons in the process, and at least you did build something damnit, even if it wasn't everything you wanted it to be.

btrautsc• 13 years ago

god this was a great comment. I laughed multiple times. Fedex people have stared at me as I sweat over which size to buy because of different costs. My friends who is a banker will send me business advice like he knows wtf he is talking about, but constantly talks down to me about "getting a real job in finance"... My dog literally wants to lay down on the day I'm just walking so I don't have to sit in the office or go home and talk about things, or other days is freaking out because I've been sitting in front of the computer all day.

basically, everything above is #RealTalk

mindcrime3• 13 years ago

Thanks. It was fun writing that. Both because it's mostly an accurate rendition of my thought process on a day to day basis, and because it was fun to try and throw in some nods to a couple of the greats who have inspired me.

jhought3• 13 years ago

enjoyed this way more than the original post, thanks. I have had these exact same anxieties and fears, but each-and-every-one is worth it

mindcrime3• 13 years ago

I have had these exact same anxieties and fears, but each-and-every-one is worth it

I know what you mean.

beat• 13 years ago

My feels, let me to you show them! :)

Thinking of my wife, who mockingly calls founders of early stage startups "living room CEOs". I was in a fundraising presentation with a couple dozen hopefuls a while back, and realized that I was in a whole roomful of living room CEOs (I already knew my own status in this regard - see she's my wife, above).

And I realized, with fascinating clarity, what my next goal is... to advance from living room CEO to paper millionaire! Get a round of angel funding with a sufficiently high valuation that my post-investment share is worth at least a million. Doesn't mean I could sell it for a million, but at least on paper I'd be rich!

thoughtcriminal• 13 years ago

I can relate. I'm running on fumes now. Making rent is my new mount Everest. I climb it every month.

One thing I hate is how people I know are second guessing me lately. Everyone has advice for me. It's frustrating. Humbling.

EDIT: Keep that passion and fire you have mindcrime. You are doing the best you can. It's all you can ask of yourself.

kkt262• 13 years ago

Good post but fix those typos and grammatical errors before you submit to Hacker News man!

dakrisht• 13 years ago

Good stuff. Couldn't agree more. Being a founder is no easy task, most people think you're bat shit crazy, don't understand what you're doing or saying and it can definitely bring you down at times. But you know what - KEEP MOVING FORWARD. Forget the doubters, always be optimistic, stay alert, pivot when necessary, keep pushing forward and eventually - you will make it happen. If it was easy, everybody would do it. So to all on HN that are lonely, broke, confused, feel down and depressed at times, feel that the world is closing in on them - send me an email and let's chat! Haha!! Just keep on going guys, eventually it all makes sense (to everyone else, it already makes sense to us!!)

Brutal Realities of Being a Founder

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