What It's Like To Be A Startup CEO - The Backstory
founderdating.comThe sequel to Paul DeJoe's epic @quora post. He talks of the lowest points he's experienced as an entrepreneur that shaped that post and what keeps him going. I remember all this. The highlight for me was working past hours in our first customer's warehouse (yeah, enterprise) room and being locked in because the guards forgot about us. Or not getting back to the hotel until 4 AM and realizing you had to wake up at 6 to finish a feature to present to the customer at 9AM, and not sleeping anyway because of it. Or the months when you couldn't pay yourself, barely scraped by on rent. The miracle of becoming "ramen profitable" and being able to eat again. Disagreements with the business partner about bootstrapping or funding and heated arguments... been there. And all the friends who were there for you, even the ones you lost in the turmoil. Guys: I know this, I've been through this, and I just want to say: it gets better. And not necessarily when you're magically successful (because that always happens, right?)—it just gets better in time. You can't stay unbalanced forever, and at some point your project will pull itself together, or it won't, and that's okay. You'll move on to another project, or maybe a decent living somewhere, and then you'll get an idea for a second new thing to create. And you'll do it better the second time. You will. I will. Because it doesn't have to be like this. It might be a true story, but it's still not right. Good luck. The most challenging thing is that the people you’d normally share your challenges or fears with don’t understand the concept of “I’m gonna create something huge with nothing and I don’t care if I die trying.” This strikes me as the saddest part of this article, but also a bit of a failure on the part of the author. Part of being a founder is surely inspiring others to believe that you're on to something; that you’re adding value and ultimately making the world better. If you believe in something, strongly enough to make you sleep in a truck, but can't communicate that to the people closest to you (who should be predisposed to listening to your point of view) then surely there's a problem. When I say 'communicate' I don't even mean getting them to sign up to your service, I just mean making it clear to them why you are sleeping in a truck and why that's a rational behaviour from your point of view. If, for example, you were sleeping in your truck to raise awareness of homelessness or as some kind of performance art; your friends and family might not agree that that was the best way forward, but they'd probably still be bringing you hot food at night. Why is your proposition so hard to explain that you're lying about where you sleep? Is it actually quite a shallow mission (e.g. I just want to make lots of money and haven't really got a vision of how to make the world better) or is it that you're not able to communicate your vision well, even to those close to you? Either way, alarm bells are ringing in my head. Life at the "top" is lonely. Explaining to people what you're doing would probably have most people put you in a mental asylum. One of the things about this that he is trying to explain is that when youre the CEO of a start up you're doing things that a VERY small percentage of people would ever do, and very few people would understand why anyone would ever choose to do that. Lonely? I agree. Impossible to explain your motivation to those closest to you? Hmmmmm. If you want customers or investors surely you need to learn how to explain your vision and be confident doing so. He started off as a developer and worked his way up to create a company and become the CEO. Why on earth should he had been versed in the things other than development? And isn't it unfair to pretend changing the world when all you want is to work for yourself, which is Ok? While there are no kids that ask their mom "where's daddy?" - meaning you - there is little to worry about. I totally wasted several years of my youth and that was the best time ever. And this guy was creating something, so +1 for that. "where's daddy" problem is rarely an issue for entrepreneurs. kids are very good at adapting to their environment as long as their environment is stable and predictable. for example if you spend with your kids whole their life only 5 minutes a day, they perceive it as normal and wouldn't expect it any other way because "that's how daddy always used to be" the key for entrepreneur with kids is to deliver consistency no matter what that consistency is. follow my advice and you will be happy entrepreneur. It's very true that kids adapt. It's same reason why kids who are abused keep their mental faculties about them. Being beaten every other day is "normal" to them. There are two problems with this "adaption". It creates adults with warped sense of what's normal. If they are lucky enough to gain a healthy disposition, they end up hating their parents for the upbringing they got. 5 minutes a day is called "pretending" to be there for your kids when your mind is somewhere else. Doing that consistently sounds like a punishment more than anything. There are very very very very few people who can become a Great CEO and Great Dad within the same time frame. You always have to give something. Just one minor thing... someone has to be with the kid every hour of every day. Don't know if you've been there but laying all that responsibility on your partner is, well, let's just hope the partner of the 5-minutes-a-day dad has patiente. indeed, kids are good at adapting ...
the only thing that saddens me when I have to miss them is that I won't get this opportunity again to see them at this particular moment of their life. giving them just 5 mins a day ... what a miserable dad would I be. Very insightful. Best quote from the article: "There’s people that will read this and find it completely ridiculous. "