There’s a great post over on TechCrunch about what it’s like to be a startup entrepreneur by Mark Suster with the usual, quick checklist of necessary qualities and caveats of what is in store for anyone that’s thinking of going down such a path. Checklists are good but nothing gives you a sense of what it’s like more than this breathless passage included below. Try and read the entire bit in one breath and then, maybe, you can appreciate what these guys go through day in and day out.
Snap. Great story on TechCrunch! Inbound calls from partners, people who want to join,“atta boys” from friends. You knew it all along. Your vision was right. VCs are calling wanting meetings. La vita e bella. Uh, oh. Fawk. Facebook DID NOT just announce that! Scoble is saying your best days are behind you? No, I think we can still be huge. We’re just going to have to change our focus a bit. Weekends. Evenings. Regroup. Team losing a bit of confidence in you. VCs pushing out your meetings a few weeks. WTF? Just a month ago they were all emailing you!
Well, you still have 6 months runway. What if we pivot slightly? Not a total change – just a different way of making money. What if we dropped the code that would compete with Facebook and instead go after this other area? Relaunch. Oh, man. Our user numbers are up. Awesome! Loving this new direction. It’s all good.
But … only 2 month’s cash left. Let’s just not pay ourselves for a couple of months. The junior devs need it. They’re month-to-month. I think we can be like the Maccabes and stretch this cash. Do we tell our team? Can they handle knowing we only have 3, maybe 4 months cash? Or if we say that will they all be putting out the word to their friends to look for their next gig?
Great new product release. Another good article. VC meetings going well. Holy sh*t!!! We just landed the biz dev partner we’ve been working on for 9 months. They love us! Awesome! $2 million in VC. Life couldn’t be better. All your buddies want to join. No. Google DID NOT just acquire our main biz dev partner. What? Google doesn’t know if they’re going to honor our contract? We now have to re-convince everybody? But we had a term sheet !!!
You can’t believe it. Eight beers that night. Maybe even tequila. And the next morning – water off a duck’s back. We’ll find a way. Startups weren’t mean to be easy. Back to work.
How about you? Are you ready for the ride?
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