

What It's Like To Be A Startup CEO - The Backstory - jmalter
http://founderdating.com/pauldejoebackstory/
The sequel to Paul DeJoe's epic @quora post. He talks of the lowest points he's experienced as an entrepreneur that shaped that post and what keeps him going.
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calinet6
I remember all this. The highlight for me was working past hours in our first
customer's warehouse (yeah, enterprise) room and being locked in because the
guards forgot about us.

Or not getting back to the hotel until 4 AM and realizing you had to wake up
at 6 to finish a feature to present to the customer at 9AM, and not sleeping
anyway because of it.

Or the months when you couldn't pay yourself, barely scraped by on rent. The
miracle of becoming "ramen profitable" and being able to eat again.
Disagreements with the business partner about bootstrapping or funding and
heated arguments... been there.

And all the friends who were there for you, even the ones you lost in the
turmoil.

Guys: I know this, I've been through this, and I just want to say: it gets
better. And not necessarily when you're magically successful (because that
always happens, right?)—it just gets better in time. You can't stay unbalanced
forever, and at some point your project will pull itself together, or it
won't, and that's okay. You'll move on to another project, or maybe a decent
living somewhere, and then you'll get an idea for a second new thing to
create.

And you'll do it better the second time. You will. I will. Because it doesn't
have to be like this. It might be a true story, but it's still not right.

Good luck.

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d4nt
_The most challenging thing is that the people you’d normally share your
challenges or fears with don’t understand the concept of “I’m gonna create
something huge with nothing and I don’t care if I die trying.”_

This strikes me as the saddest part of this article, but also a bit of a
failure on the part of the author. Part of being a founder is surely inspiring
others to believe that you're on to something; that you’re adding value and
ultimately making the world better. If you believe in something, strongly
enough to make you sleep in a truck, but can't communicate that to the people
closest to you (who should be predisposed to listening to your point of view)
then surely there's a problem.

When I say 'communicate' I don't even mean getting them to sign up to your
service, I just mean making it clear to them why you are sleeping in a truck
and why that's a rational behaviour from your point of view.

If, for example, you were sleeping in your truck to raise awareness of
homelessness or as some kind of performance art; your friends and family might
not agree that that was the best way forward, but they'd probably still be
bringing you hot food at night. Why is your proposition so hard to explain
that you're lying about where you sleep? Is it actually quite a shallow
mission (e.g. I just want to make lots of money and haven't really got a
vision of how to make the world better) or is it that you're not able to
communicate your vision well, even to those close to you? Either way, alarm
bells are ringing in my head.

~~~
djt
Life at the "top" is lonely. Explaining to people what you're doing would
probably have most people put you in a mental asylum. One of the things about
this that he is trying to explain is that when youre the CEO of a start up
you're doing things that a VERY small percentage of people would ever do, and
very few people would understand why anyone would ever choose to do that.

~~~
d4nt
Lonely? I agree. Impossible to explain your motivation to those closest to
you? Hmmmmm. If you want customers or investors surely you need to learn how
to explain your vision and be confident doing so.

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alexro
While there are no kids that ask their mom "where's daddy?" - meaning you -
there is little to worry about.

I totally wasted several years of my youth and that was the best time ever.
And this guy was creating something, so +1 for that.

~~~
lubos
"where's daddy" problem is rarely an issue for entrepreneurs.

kids are very good at adapting to their environment as long as their
environment is stable and predictable. for example if you spend with your kids
whole their life only 5 minutes a day, they perceive it as normal and wouldn't
expect it any other way because "that's how daddy always used to be"

the key for entrepreneur with kids is to deliver consistency no matter what
that consistency is. follow my advice and you will be happy entrepreneur.

~~~
refurb
It's very true that kids adapt. It's same reason why kids who are abused keep
their mental faculties about them. Being beaten every other day is "normal" to
them.

There are two problems with this "adaption". It creates adults with warped
sense of what's normal. If they are lucky enough to gain a healthy
disposition, they end up hating their parents for the upbringing they got.

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abolibibelot
Very insightful. Best quote from the article: "There’s people that will read
this and find it completely ridiculous. "

