Using a throway but I’ve been participating in the HN community since 2010
I lucked out on a recent SaaS venture that hit product/market fit right away. It has been profitable since day one and is consistently growing every month.
Nothing massive but were in the mid 5 digits MRR and My ooperating costs aren’t too high and leave me with a profit margin of ~75% or so.
Despite the successes in some areas, I don’t think I have ever been so anxious and hopeless in my life as I am now. As more users sign up each day, I find myself feeling more burdened by the increased responsibility rather than elated that people are finding value in what I built. Emergency issues seem to be regular events and I find myself working 50+ hour shifts on the regular in order to get them handled. I and am just becoming totally burned out with it all. I find myself dreading checking email / slack / twitter because there is doubtlessly always more work waiting for me there. Equally, if I avoid it, the anxiety of it all backing up into a much larger job later doesn’t allow me to really even rest when I’m taking time away.
I realize that the answer is to figure out how to build out the team and spread the work around more evenly but then that puts me totally outside of where my skillset set and comfort zone are. The crux of the matter is that Im terrible at regular routine and consistency. I can happily work 20 hours a day for weeks on the codebase but then Ill crash and need a week or two of downtime. This doesn jive well with what our service and customers need as well as any future employees.
Is it just time to grow up and change who I am? Anyone been in this situation and found a good strategy for navigating this initial growth phase?
Ps - full-stack js devs who are interested in working at a growing company using bleeding edge tech. Contact me: throwaway_qwert@protonmail.com
