
Ask HN: Technical Founder in Operational Hell - leteci
My startup is at an early stage, with a team size of 5 (+ one cat).
What was very unexpected for me as a manager is how much time and effort I have to put in filling out different forms (on- and offline). Hence providing the same information over and over again.
I estimate that in the last month I spent ~5 hours on this stuff (feels like 100).<p>Can anyone relate or knows of any solution? I was thinking of hiring an office manager, but we are trying to stay lean as our runway is not too long.
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brudgers
Last month had thirty days. That's 720 hours. You're prioritizing something
that takes less than 1% of your time. Looking for an alternative will take
more than that. Hiring someone will take many many times that much. Might be
better to roll up your sleeves and just do what needs to be done. Good luck.

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itronitron
I recommend setting a regular schedule for yourself (such as 10am - 11am on
Tuesdays and Thursdays) where you just sit down and do paperwork for the
business, and if there is no paperwork to do then organize receipts.

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codegeek
In 1 month, you spent about 5 hours doing operational stuff with a team of 5
and you think that is too much ? I would say not really. Welcome to being the
founder. I was just yelling at myself for figuring out how to fix the damn
CRM. And I actually have a team of sales/marketing people even though we are
just a little bigger than your team size.

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shoo
For reference, I have highly technical colleagues with leadership/engineering
management positions in a large non tech enterprise who might spend their time
in a typical week like this: 25% line management of direct reports, 30% admin
or interviewing, 44% attending meetings about various initiatives, 1% maybe
doing something as an individual contributor.

