What’s so hard about a start-up?
Quite often its said that a start-up requires some kind of sacrifice or contribution that is an order of magnitude higher than working a “normal” job. I suspect there are few who would question the premise although I doubt that you could take a poll of ten people and get more than three people to say the same thing as to what exactly that sacrifice is. I had time to think about this question this weekend as I’ve been recovering from the flu. Starting around Wednesday, I couldn’t hold down any food whatsoever. By Thursday night, I had thrown up about 10 times. Needless to say, it wasn’t fun at all.
The first year (and in particular the first few months) of a start-up is a very fragile time. Employees know they’re in a high risk situation and there hasn’t really been enough time for predictable routines to set in. Most people like routines. They like to know what happens the minute they arrive at the office. Wrinkles in routine can cause some (very valuable) people to wonder in the back of their minds whether or not they are doing the right thing for their career. For a start-up CEO, you are a critical component in this fragile equation because when routines are interrupted, people look to you to reassure them. In a start-up environment, it is the very presence of the founding CEO that is crucial. Long hours aren’t just necessary because there is much to be done and few resources to accomodate but also because the CEO plays the crucial leadership and psychological role that keeps the team together. Given Microsoft’s size, they can lose the bid to block Kai-Fu Lee from working at Google but in the grand scheme of things his departure really has very little impact. Losing one key developer in a start-up with less than 10 people can put the entire project in jeopardy.
For me, what’s so hard about a start-up is that you:
1) Will have to work many, many hours if you are doing your job as a founder correctly
2) You must be accessible at home via phone and email during odd hours
3) You must take responsibility for the smallest detail
4) You must deal with the issue of self preservation with fewer vacation days
5) You accept the burden of stress and the need to be in multiple places at the same time
6) You must do all of this cheerfully and willingly
7) You must assume most everything needs your attention without coming across as a fatalist
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Kelly, I’m going through the very same thing with OSNAP.net (as well as the same thing regarding the flu). One question I have: how is your support base? While my fiancé offers her support in that she believes my project will be a success, she has a very hard time with the long hours and haphazard schedule. Seeing as I’ve worked on a lot of mismanaged projects in the past year, her patience has grown thin with excessive absences, stressful nights with little sleep (code, marketing, positioning, branding, all running through where sugarplums are supposed to be dancing). Should support of those around you be #8?
Chad,
Great comments and I do think that a solid support base can be helpful but may not be necessary. I’ve been fortunate in that my wife lives the same lifestyle I do over at http://www.theplatform.com She (Tricia Iboshi)is part of the management team and fights hard every day to insure that start-up grows up into a healthy company. So we are basically waging the same kind of war each and every day. Having said that, I don’t lean on her for support necessarily because I know there is only so much she can do. The main thing is that she trusts my judgement and she believes that the mistakes we’ve made in the past actually increase our chances for more successes in the future.
In your case, I’m sure the same thing is true. You are aware of the problems that plagued your previous ventures and you have made mental notes of ‘what not to do’. Once your friends and family see you parlay those learning experiences into your first “base hit” I suspect you’ll get more and more ‘energy add’ and less ‘energy drain’ from the support structure around you. In my limited experience, it comes down to simply being present in the 9th innning no matter what the tribulation. For some reason the world likes to dole out successes only after the seeming breaking point. Anytime you get a nice base hit before a breaking point (e.g. where you say “that was easy”) just chalk it up to a lucky break and go back to assuming the next base hit will be hard again. I don’t think this means being negative. I think it means being aware of the challenges and hard work and loving the battle.
What’s so hard about a start-up?
Kelly Smith, one of my advisors, has a great post about the sacrifices one must make for their own Start-up. I can tell my story and how I’m managing my personal life… I had a very good and stable job