Life of a Startup Founder

This week, Research To Practice (the startup I'm working on) is reaching a big milestone: our first three big customers are coming on board and we'll be starting to actually generate revenue. This is a pretty exciting mile-marker, and on the eve of it's occurrence I've taken a minute to stop and reflect on the last 4 or 5 months that I've spent building this product. There were some expectations I had about working on a small company that turned out to be more or less inaccurate, and I thought I'd mention them here in order to provide some anecdotal substance for any readers considering moving to a startup. So here, listed below, are some of the things that I believed to be absolute about life in a startup company, and they're paired with my actual experience on the topic.

1. Startup work is much harder than corporate work

This one I feel is deceptive because it's very true, but not in the way I'd imagined. Prior to leaving my job as a Software Consultant, I pictured life in a startup as sort of a romantic-technological fantasy: I saw myself finding brilliant solutions to near-impossible technical problems that no-one else had solved, and spending lots of time tweaking complex algorithms to process data more efficiently. Truth be told, it's not like that; most of the technological problems and challenges I tackle are the same ones I ran into at every corporate programming job I had in the past, and inevitably they've already been solved by someone smarter than me, so really I'm just pulling together other peoples marvels into a new product. That's not particularly different from what I did before. What makes the startup life "harder" (in my opinion) is the lack of structure that many of us get used to behind our desks in big companies. On my current project, there isn't anybody handing me a spec regarding what features are needed with extensive use-cases, or a mockup showing me what the UI should look like. Even the "agile" shops I've worked in had "stories" that were written out for us to work off of. The environment of my current company is much more impromptu; we have one industry expert (who gives me input on what to build), one business expert (who gives me input on what's most important), and one technological expert (me), and with our commitments piled up our design discussions are quick verbal affairs that are scheduled on an as-needed basis. You've really got to be able to self-motivate to survive the workflow, and be good at asking the right questions to determine what features you REALLY need.

Also there's no-one to hand a problem off to if it's out of your depth. Database problem? Library not behaving as you'd expect? UI acting funky in different browsers? If something comes up that isn't your specialty, you have to be able to read up on it fast because nobody else is going to do it for you. This issue in particular has pushed my adaptability to the limit, and for me that's actually been very enjoyable, but if research into unfamiliar topics is something you deplore than you'd be well off to avoid the startup life at all costs.

2. Working on a startup is nothing short of an obsession. You will be consumed by the work, estrange your friends, and sleep under your desk more often than not.

I think there's a nearly-heroic idea that floats around out there of the super-hacker working around the clock to make up something unimaginably cool in an unbelievable amount of time. Certainly I'd heard my own share of war-stories from more experienced developers who put in that kind of time in the early stages of their companies. It can almost be seen as a badge of honor among programmers, proving what a work-a-holic you are, but I believe that it's both unhealthy and ultimately doesn't gain you any productivity. There have been a couple times where I've stayed up late a night or three in a row to deliver something on time, but it isn't the norm and shouldn't be necessary very often. Yes, you have to move fast if you want to become profitable before you run out of money; but in my personal experience I can usually get more work done in 6 focused hours than in 16 of the "marathon" variety, and it will probably be of higher quality since I won't be slapping irresponsible patches in just to "get it done" or glazing over stupid mistakes because of the hackers version of that zombie-like mindset you fall into after driving for 12 hours. Therefore I'm actually doing the business a favor by keeping a regular work-schedule, and I still get to see my wife in the evenings and attend my college classes a few nights per week. Everybody wins.

3. Startup founders are fabulously rich

Don't get me wrong here, I knew before I started this experiment that nobody becomes wealthy overnight; but even with that knowledge firmly in my head I can't keep out the mental pictures of people who hit home-runs with their startups and retired early. The fact of the matter is, the stipend I'm drawing right now for my living expenses is quite a pay-cut from the big bucks I was making before as a consultant. I'm having to watch my expenses again, something I'm not used to, and sometimes that makes me a little uncomfortable. So really, if you look at it in financial terms, I've actually taken a step backwards. Now, there IS the hope of a big payoff for the risks I'm taking right now with my financial situation: one day we might have a hugely-profitable business running under us that wold make my old corporate salary look like a pittance. But you know what? Even if that doesn't happen, I'm enjoying my life right now (working on interesting problems and having a big stake in the outcome) a lot more than I did when I was working in a nice office for a big salary. As cliche as it sounds, money won't make you happy.