someone please talk about founder struggles?
let me start with a disclaimer that this blog might make you think twice about starting up. but here’s my honest, upfront view — if you have an idea you can give your 100% to for the next 5-10 years, go ahead and take that leap of faith. it will 100% be worth the ride — let no one tell you otherwise.
social media tells us glorified stories of successful startup founders — how they started, scaled, raised, made memos that everyone wanted to get their hands on, well crafted annual reports and twitter threads on things their start ups are doing right — what it doesn’t tell us is about the daily failures and struggles.
in ben horowitz’s words:
‘‘the biggest myth is that it’s fun. the reality is that creating and running a business is an incredibly tough grind, and it’s emotionally debilitating. it can be euphoric, but more often than not, it’s terrifying.’’
first things first — understand that when you’re starting up, everything that can go wrong will go wrong. this applies to us at leap.club too. whether it’s unanswered cold emails, rejections from VCs who don’t think our ‘TAM is big enough’, the heartaches of losing employees we wanted to continue working with, another disagreement with my co-founder, the daily hiring struggles, having to (read: trying to) stay calm inspite of unmet targets and all those lonely nights of note making — we see it all, we’re just not documenting it.
for a change, here is my unabashed, unfiltered version of building and struggling to build leap.club, with the hope that everyone starts to give us a real ‘behind the curtain’ view of building a start up >> everything else they do right now — for our own sanity:
- not always getting people + culture right: the right founding team makes or breaks a startup, and while we’re lucky that everyone thinks leap.club has its culture figured out, it has definitely not been an easy ride. we have had some stellar folks join leap over the years, but not all hires have worked out and we’ve had to take some very tough decisions along the way. you owe your team the best possible work environment and the best possible players for every role. that means you have to let people go when things aren’t working out, no matter how much you’d like them to stay. it also takes a mental toll on me, like i’m sure it does on all founders. every single time.
- the constant self doubt is real: when something doesn’t go the way we expected it to go, i start thinking about all the things i could have done differently. it’s a constant uphill battle on most days. sometimes i also look at other founders and feel like they have everything ‘figured out’ — they are succeeding, holidaying, raising big $$, seem to be doing well business metrics wise, are insanely sharp — whereas i feel like i’m not moving fast enough, even after putting in all those hours sitting in front of a laptop all day. the self doubt is real, no one’s patting your back and you’ve gotta keep sprinting.
- not being able to make everyone happy: while it’s crucial to have a team that supports you, understands the vision and ‘thinks like a founder’, it’s not easy to scale this ‘sports team’. at the beginning, it was relatively easier— it was a tight knit group that put in all the hours possible to make leap win, went the extra mile even on the hard days and also knew exactly when i was having a bad one. now, with the team growing, i struggle to be responsible for everyone’s happiness and wellbeing. sure i want all of them to succeed, and making them win is the important thing to do. but the truth is, it’s not humanly possible to please everyone. on most days, i have to be the one to say ‘no’ and be the bearer of bad news. some people might not even like my working style and that is just life.
- i think about work all the time: even when i’m spending time with the people i love, when i’m traveling, when i’m meeting friends for dinner over a weekend — i can’t switch off and work is a big part of me/ my identity. i used to beat myself about this earlier, now i’ve learnt to accept it.
- not having real ‘work buddies’: do i have a team i trust blindly? of course! do i have a co-founder who will take a bullet for me? fosho. but do i miss having buddies at work? YES. you can be the most likeable founder in the world but anyone who tells you it’s not a lonely journey is lying. i miss having friends, cracking unfiltered jokes, having someone cover for me on days i just want to stay in bed and take a damn break. i keep telling my co-founder that i miss zomato every once in a while. what i’m really saying → i miss not being the responsible one once in a while.
- investors who say they want to ‘wait it out’: sucks. what sucks more? knowing what it really means is ‘i don’t believe in your company’. when you launch a startup hearing “no” is part of your daily routine. everybody says no to you, but the hardest “no” comes from investors. the job of an investor is to see the potential in a company, and bet on it before this potential is obvious to the rest of the market. so when an investor says no, it’s not merely that they have their doubts on the product, the market or the vision. it’s that they don’t believe that your company will be able to make it work — otherwise they’d be investing. not a great morale booster. being looked at as social charity; a cause / project; pitching the need for a women’s network to a room full of men (in most cases) — doesn’t help either. we’re doing almost a million ARR and changing lives everyday but i’ll save that for another day.
- impatience and problem solving: this impatience has resulted in some work failures (we’ve launched and shut features too soon), burnout (i’ve expected people to work at the speed of light) and disappointment (as a result of the above). as much i know it’s important to figure who the next best person is to solve any given problem and focus my own energy on the other ones, i often find myself in this ‘problem solve everything’ trap from time to time. learning everyday, i guess.
truth is, there’s no guidebook on how to build a company. you only learn from your own mistakes, and maybe that’s what makes it worth it. i doubt that these struggles will ever be possible to list on a single blog or will ever stop for that matter, but over time you just grow a thicker skin and keep going no matter what. it potentially only gets harder. but realising that it’s hard for everyone makes it a bit less lonely.
fun fact: facebook had serious cofounder issues early on, slack’s first product never made it out of beta, and i’m sure uber’s execs aren’t too comfortable dealing with all those trials, yet those are the companies every startup is trying to emulate. growth happens slowly, then suddenly — keep building 💡
