

Frustrations on the first "official" leap - mrspaceman

I've been checking out ycombinator on and off for a couple of years, watching the inspirational videos and reading the news, but this is my first thread. I felt compelled to vent my frustrations about my experiences.<p>After winning a couple of university sponsored business plan competitions (two separate ideas) and getting this feeling of "I just might make it in the start-up world" I decided to leave my first job (after 5 yrs) last March and launch a start-up. (SIDENOTE: the other two business ideas went nowhere due to late-to-market and patent road-block discouragement... some may say that's silly).<p>Anyway, we launched the company (a web-based lead generation/broker for a niche service sector) in March with a team of 3, and we later added another guy to help us out with tasks here and there. I am the only one that quit my job to work on this, and the 4th guy was unemployed so we figured we'd help him by giving him an opportunity to be part of something, and get help in return. After several business operations restructuring efforts, zero revenue from freemium (put our name out there) models, and feelings of not being on the same page in life with everyone, I now find myself discouraged. I feel like the rest of my team is treating this as a pet project, simply due to other commitments going on in their lives. I feel like everything is hanging by a thread, and I'm the one holding it. I'm approaching my stop-loss limit soon and I feel like I'm just gonna turn the lights off soon and walk out.<p>Risking big and falling on your face is something that I really don't want to experience, but I seem to be headed in that direction. advice?
======
jcr
As for inequality of investment (time, effort) between you and your partners,
this happens, a lot, and there is an important lesson you need to learn from
it; when it comes to picking co-founders and employees, chose wisely.

> Risking big and falling on your face is something that I really don't want
> to experience, but I seem to be headed in that direction. advice?

Learn to fail gracefully. Failure happens to everyone, so the differentiating
factor is how well you fail.

On HN, you'll hear the term "pivot" a lot. It's just an overly polite way to
say "failure and change of direction." This is one of the may forms of failing
gracefully.

If the people you are working with are unable to fail gracefully, walk away.
You'll never get anywhere with them.

~~~
mrspaceman
Thanks for the response, I'm definitely widening my scope nowadays to see
which direction I can shift my efforts to. I spoke w/my team about my issues
and everyone's on board with us exploring different opportunities... they
better be unless they want to pay my rent soon, lol

