

Brutal Realities of Being a Founder - btrautsc
http://getfireplug.com/blog2013/05/10/5-things-founder-willing-talk-about/

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mindcrime
No doubt. Being a startup founder is a f%@#ng nightmare. Fear, doubt, anxiety
and stress are your constant companions... and pretty much your only
companions. Nobody else understands what you're talking about even if you _do_
get somebody to listen to you babble. Every time you glance at Hacker News, or
Google News, or Twitter you're seeing something about one of your competitors:
getting funding, landing a big new deal, announcing a new product, etc. Nobody
wants to return your calls or answer your emails, and all the people from
various entrepreneurial support groups who supposedly exist to "help"
entrepreneurs also don't understand what you're doing. Angel investors roll
their eyes when you try to explain why your thing is going to work. VC guys
will talk to you, only because they're hedging their bets in case you _do_
actually manage to get some traction. Servers crash, there's 2000x more work
to be done than time to do it... the guy at Fedex Kinkos even thinks you're
crazy and starts giving you business advice when you go pickup the latest
batch of brochures. The waitress at the restaurant asks you why you don't
"pivot" to a better business model. Your dog thinks you must be insane to keep
going. You wake up in a cold-sweat thinking about the crisis of the day and
trying to figure out how to make the impossible happen with no resources. The
other startup founders you meet at "startup happy hour" events are all working
on inane "cat picture social network" sites and can't have an informed
conversation with you about your "Semantic Web and Social Networking For The
Enterprise" startup. You'd have to be insane to keep doing this. You try to
signup for a subscription at Hoovers.com but they don't do online signups
anymore, forcing you to call and talk to somebody for a brain-dead simple
transaction. Code that compiled perfectly fine yesterday won't compile today
and you know damn well you haven't changed anything. You have nightmares about
IBM launching a product that does what your thing does. Dating? You haven't
had time to think about dating since Christopher Eccleston was playing The
Doctor. You wonder, did your subscription to Triangle Business Journal just
expire? Can you afford to renew it? Your $DAYJOB boss won't quit reminding you
that "startups are a lottery and you probably won't win". You check the latest
Hacker News post and it's filled with people talking about how all success
just comes down to luck, and mocking the idiots who think they can actually
influence events. Random people at Barnes & Noble are silently judging you as
you sit there with your coffee and code... staring with their ghastly, pale
faces, mocking you with their grotesque eyes, damning you with those horrible,
hollow, eldritch eyes... the eyes, My GOd Th3 3yes _!% &#&(()&@&$#@+%^HNO
CARRIER_

And then you realize that you wouldn't trade it for anything in the world.
Because at least you don't have some jackoff $BOSS leering at you going
"Sooooooo, Peter, how's it going? You _did_ get the memo about the new
coversheets for the TPS reports, right"??? And you know that at least, win,
lose, or draw, that you did it your way, and that you gave yourself a fighting
chance at putting yourself in control of your own life. And because whether or
succeed or fail, you learned valuable lessons in the process, and at least you
did build _something_ damnit, even if it wasn't everything you wanted it to
be.

~~~
btrautsc
god this was a great comment. I laughed multiple times. Fedex people have
stared at me as I sweat over which size to buy because of different costs. My
friends who is a banker will send me business advice like he knows wtf he is
talking about, but constantly talks down to me about "getting a real job in
finance"... My dog literally wants to lay down on the day I'm just walking so
I don't have to sit in the office or go home and talk about things, or other
days is freaking out because I've been sitting in front of the computer all
day.

basically, everything above is #RealTalk

~~~
mindcrime
Thanks. It was fun writing that. Both because it's mostly an accurate
rendition of my thought process on a day to day basis, and because it was fun
to try and throw in some nods to a couple of the greats who have inspired me.

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dakrisht
Good stuff. Couldn't agree more. Being a founder is no easy task, most people
think you're bat shit crazy, don't understand what you're doing or saying and
it can definitely bring you down at times. But you know what - KEEP MOVING
FORWARD. Forget the doubters, always be optimistic, stay alert, pivot when
necessary, keep pushing forward and eventually - you will make it happen. If
it was easy, everybody would do it. So to all on HN that are lonely, broke,
confused, feel down and depressed at times, feel that the world is closing in
on them - send me an email and let's chat! Haha!! Just keep on going guys,
eventually it all makes sense (to everyone else, it already makes sense to
us!!)

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kkt262
Good post but fix those typos and grammatical errors before you submit to
Hacker News man!

