Day 30
Startups are hard. I am in a state of constant terror, uncertainty, insecurity, and low self esteem. At times I realize how terrifying my current position is, and I spend a few minutes mulling over all my accomplishments in an attempt to justify where I am now. All the greatest entrepreneurs and all the worst were once in this exact position. Their ability to make the right decisions, roll with the punches, to be confident amidst complete uncertainty (and good fortune) put them where they are from where I am. Rather than feel accomplished about where I am I only feel terror at how far I could fall and how much further I have to climb. It’s incredible how far in this direction a startup can throw you, especially when you immerse yourself in it. I began the summer having been lifted high atop a perch by continuous accolades. My self esteem skyrocketed with job offers, prize winnings, praise from all my friends and family, and finally acceptance to a notable startup accelerator. It seemed like life was continuously improving, was becoming ever more exciting, and I was enjoying every minute of it. Then, all of a sudden, I realized what a startup is really like. Startups have none of this; there are accolades, but they don’t have the sheen they did when it wasn’t your primary occupation. Suddenly, there is no satisfaction, nothing is good enough, and you never stop worrying about the next step. After my app won an award I took little time to enjoy the occassion; I instead was struck with worry that the servers wouldn’t be able to handle the traffic. Startups make you mature, control your emotions and think 10x less of yourself while being 100x more productive. It’s interesting that this only happens if you have the ability to immerse yourself in the startup. Every interaction outside of the startup breaks the immersion, elucidates your accomplishment and makes your problems seem less significant. Your self esteem will skyrocket, but your productivity will plummet. The outsiders’ perspective will rub off, they envision you high up on a perch, with a few more footholds to the peak, but only if they were standing on the perch would they notice the minutiae critical to your climb, that every foothold is precarious and every inch of ascension could be the difference between life and death. So that’s at least one lesson learned; don’t lose the immersion, your insiders’ perspective is critical, and be wary of advice from the outside. No matter how intelligent the advisor, unless you are deluded into believing you’ve communicated absolutely all the information you have in the decision, they are unlikely to be so much more intelligent that they’d make a better decision than you would. Frame their decisions respective to the situation they were in, understand the reasoning behind their decision in that situation, and determine whether, and to what extent, it reasonably applies to yours. Every decision is mission critical, and I take solace in the disagreements between myself and my cofounder. The more we discuss and the more we disagree, so long as we are both reasonable, communicative and emotionally transparent, the less likely we are to make a biased, incorrect decision.