
When you want to quit because it's just not worth it - AliCollins
http://blog.asmartbear.com/startups-emotionally-draining.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+blogspot/smartbear+(A+Smart+Bear:+Startups+%2B+Marketing+%2B+Geekery)&utm_content=Google+UK
======
jdp23
Great article -- both in terms of the general message and the specific story
about the bully.

One thing that helps a lot in a situation like that is having advisors (or
board members) you can trust to talk with in situations like this. If they all
also say "you don't know the Way It Works", then it's worth listening. More
likely, though, they'll say something more along the lines of "Wow, that guy's
an asshole. Look, you're confident about your business model, and here are
some other examples of companies who don't offer bulk discounts. He's just
being a roadblock. Here are some sales techniques that might help in a
situation like this."

At my startup back in the 1990s, we had gotten to verbal agreement on a $200K
deal. The paperwork hit a snag and our CEO headed off on vacation to a place
with no FAXes or FedEx, but no problem: I was a naiveish techie, but I wa also
founder/CTO and had signing authority. So we agreed that I'd fly to their
location onsite, sign the contract, and get going. Once I got there, surprise:
a couple of new terms! And no, we couldn't get started without a contract.

I said, y'know, I'm not comfortable with this. They said "but that means
you'll just have to turn around and fly home." The deal was pretty key to our
success and I didn't want to let it go but you have to draw lines. So I called
up one of my board members, who agreed. They said "stick around for lunch,
let's talk this through." After lunch they decided that the new terms didn't
have to be there after all. Funny how that worked.

------
simonsquiff
It seems like part of the problem with procurement was not clearly
illustrating that a discount had been applied after all.

PM: Well I’m going to need some kind of discount. How about 30%?

Me: As it says on our website, we don’t discount.

PM: But I’m buying 400 seats!

Me: Yes, and we already provide a nice discount for bulk orders, which is
already included on the invoice and documented on the website.

I.e. he was wrong to say 'we don't discount'. The answer is actually - 'yes,
I've already applied your discount. Because you are buying so many seats, you
get our discount of x%. If you bought another y, you'd get z%'. Sounds like it
could have been communicated better.

~~~
JonnieCache
It's a cognitive dissonance issue. People will perceive more value in a
discount when they are clearly shown how much they would have paid without the
discount, versus how much they are paying with the discount.

Think about how good it makes you feel when you paste in a coupon code during
the _last stage_ of a checkout procedure and watch the price drop to half what
it was before. You can't quite believe that it has worked correctly, its that
satisfying.

If you want to really milk it, write a checkout pathway with some javascript
that makes the digits of the price spin round like an odometer, preferably
with the sound of a slot machine paying out.

~~~
simonsquiff
Exactly, it's as much about communication and presentation as it is about your
actual business model

------
arkitaip
Running a startup rarely makes sense. You are pushing on and on despite all
warning signals telling you not to.

You barely have money left. Most of your friends have been reduced to ghosts
and memories, You can't recall the last time you saw some of your family and
you are constantly working. Working instead of eating, working late into the
nights and beyond, working when you're supposed to be taking time of and
resting. It's so easy to get tunnel vision and descending down the rabbit hole
if you are not careful. Easy to forget to check if you're doing the right
things properly. Easy to ignore or rationalize having blown every single
deadline and budget you made.

When you compare startups with usual 9-5 salary work, it's actually amazing
how much risk founders take and how incredibly hard they work. And people
wonder why startup founders - the very few that actually make it - get so much
more money than the employees.

~~~
chadgeidel
I don't know if people wonder why startup founders get more money than
employees. I think they wonder why the current CEO does.

Maybe it's just me, but if you have started and are running a successful
company you "deserve" every cent you can keep.

------
edw519
"It is never as bad as it appears and it is never as good as it seems, and I
truly believe that."

\- Bill Cowher (former Pittsburgh Steelers football coach)

~~~
billswift
A similar quote I remember: "Nothing is ever as good, or as bad, as it first
appears." I don't have a source for it; it may even be a misremembered version
of a misquoted version of that quote.

~~~
MediaBehavior
Maybe you're thinking of Hamlet's "There's nothing good or bad but _thinking_
makes it so." ?

------
dabent
Did Jason Baptiste draw that graph? I thought Paul Graham did at the YC
offices. (The one with the Tech Crunch of initiation)

~~~
gruseom
It's well known to be on the wall at YC. The OP should update his attribution.

~~~
savrajsingh
I think it was originally drawn during the Summer '08 batch, as it was already
there for Winter '09.

------
ajhit406
Wouldn't the logical entrepreneur maybe take a moment and say:

* This is a $200,000 contract.

* I can pay my own d-bag $35k / year to just yell "Smokey, This is not 'Nam. This is bowling. There are rules."

Then, if he doesn't oblige, read from this script:

<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118715/quotes?qt0464765>

Seems like the finances still would work out, and you can sip a pina colada on
the beach somewhere instead of crying about it.

~~~
TheSOB88
Who the hell would want a person like that in their company?

~~~
ajhit406
I agree, I'm just saying it's better than giving up. Sometimes founders think
they have to (and can) do everything that's all.

In this particular case, a $200k contract might warrant hiring new people
instead of failing...

But i'm all for the do-it-all CEO...

------
AliCollins
Has anyone reading this quit a startup because of a similar experience? Or do
you want to quit your current startup??!

~~~
wazoox
One of my co-founders quit during the past recession, when our sales dipped to
zero in no time -- we actually had zero sales for 9 months straight.

I think he simply couldn't accept the failure, even while it obviously wasn't
anything wrong from ourselves. He started resenting any minor annoyance as an
act of sabotage. If I came late to the office (I've always, always came late
for the past 20 years; I hardly pass the door before 11AM if not for a serious
reason), if the sales guy failed to close a sale (well, good luck with
that...), he lived that as a personal offence and a deliberate attempt to
annihilate his own efforts.

What the article didn't mention is that this emotional burden can alter
relationships and literally make the atmosphere poisonous. It's quite
incredible, but an 8 persons group can be filled with petty politics, resent
and conspirational talks. As a result we had a near complete reset (the team
went from 8 to 2, then back to 8 in 6 to 9 months).

~~~
PakG1
>> even while it obviously wasn't anything wrong from ourselves

Don't take this as belittling your efforts or your results, because I'm not
trying to, I'm simply stating what is probably a fact of life. When you have 0
sales for 9 months straight, eventually somebody has to take responsibility.
Preferably, that should be everyone pitching in to make one last charge up the
hill, but it doesn't change the fact that someone needs to and eventually will
take responsibility and blame for what happened (or did not happen, rather).
This is the founder's blessing and curse, huh?

~~~
SkyMarshal
Under normal circumstances that's probably true, but in the middle of the
worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, where uncertainty rules and
everyone is cutting back purchases of everything until they see whether the
govt will bail out the economy and how effective it will be, you can probably
cut yourself some slack if your erstwhile customers are hesitant to buy from a
new startup.

------
dtran
Startups are definitely emotionally draining, and while I would like to
believe in my resiliency, if I didn't have two awesome co-founders there in
the trenches with me, I'm not sure I'd still be fighting the good fight
(Thanks Ricky and Mark!).

I can't seem to find all of the details about Smart Bear, but it sounds like
it was a bootstrapped, solo founder operation (not sure how quickly he hired
those 4 people). That amazes the hell out of me. Solo founders in general seem
like magical Django ponies with how they're able to juggle and prioritize
product, customers, etc. But the hardest part of being a solo founder must be
not having the emotional support of a team working till all hours of the
morning with you. I know Ray of Ginzametrics has said that his family is a
huge help almost to the point where his wife is almost like a cofounder. Any
solo founders out there, I'm interested to hear how you recharge/support
yourself emotinally.

------
ctdonath
After starting a family and enduring heart surgery, one learns there is no
"quit".

~~~
arkitaip
Ugh, another frivolous down vote. Why do people do this?

Anyways, experience certainly can strengthen us and give a soothing
perspective to the hardships we are enduring. IMHO this makes it all the more
important that you're really into a startup because you are passionate about
it and have a more solid motivation factor than just money or, even worse,
desperation.

~~~
T-hawk
> Ugh, another frivolous down vote. Why do people do this?

Fat fingering the downvote button? Never ascribe to malice that which can be
explained by incompetence...

~~~
nkurz
Malice and incompetence seem like too narrow of a spectrum. I voted it down
because I found it unhelpful for the purpose of further discussion. Saying
"there is no quit" strikes me as pap, and merely a meme friendly way of saying
that self-doubt is never productive.

As someone feeling trapped in a business and searching for meaning and
purpose, I preferred that top billing on the page be elsewhere. What do you
particularly like about this response that makes you think that no one would
intentionally vote it down?

~~~
ctdonath
Fine, I'll elaborate. Didn't have the time when I posted it.

Creating a family, one learns quitting is just not an option. No matter how
bad things get, no matter how beaten down or frustrated you get, no matter how
much you want out, there is no "quit". Contrasted with that the notion of
quitting for lesser reasons, say because a customer's buyer is being a pain or
because a long-term goal is draining, is relegated to pathetic. Doesn't mean
there is never a reason to stop or change course, but "quit" is no longer a
viable option in one's personal philosophy.

Enduring heart surgery puts a new perspective on life. Going to sleep knowing
you really might not wake up, and being at peace with the fact, means anything
else can be endured given some time and effort. Waking up knowing your heart
stopped beating for several hours - to wit you've been dead - means you _have_
endured the worst that can happen. The pain (having had your chest pried open
with a car jack) raises the bar way above where it was, so you know no matter
how much it hurts you can get thru it.

I have a dependent family; quitting is not an option. I've been dead; all
frustrations pale in comparison. So yeah: there is no quit.

~~~
PakG1
What should be and what is are still unfortunately sometimes different things.
Look at deadbeat parents, or worse, parents that just run off. Sad to say,
there is such a thing as quit for families, even if it's not right.

Agreed that surviving anything painful/risky helps you to get through new
pain; heart surgery must definitely rank up there.

~~~
true_religion
How about cases where it _is_ right to "quit" the family, such as those of
battered spouses or abused children?

~~~
PakG1
Quitting stops the issue, but it then would often create a new set of problems
(eg. income). The right thing to do is become a better person, become the
solution, not the problem.

~~~
true_religion
I was speaking about the perspective of the battered and abused---they are the
ones who leave.

------
Maro
In the context of enterprise sales/consulting, this is all pretty standard
stuff. One helpful investor told us early on that everybody always wants a
discount, and you have to give out discounts, so you just bake that into your
price. Anything else is wishful thinking and will harm your startup.

------
Loic
Thank you, no, really really thank you. Just got a call this morning for a
negotiation round with a big pharma corporation. I would have not read this
article yesterday, I would have been falling flat. So, I gave a bit, but
definitely not as much as I would have if I had not read this article. Again,
thank you!

------
TheSOB88
I'd like to imagine that if faced with such a situation, I'd pride myself with
being a good person who actually creates something of value in the world, he's
just some jerk peon who's doomed to live the rest of his life treating people
like shit, yada yada.

But I've never had to go through anything like that. After putting your heart
into something and some guy whose job is to make you feel worthless makes you
feel worthless, I don't know if I could. That kind of thing can break a man.

