I Don't Want to Be a Founder

I remember as I was starting my company, I reached out to a founder of a company you've likely heard of for advice. We grabbed drinks, and he practically begged me to not start a company, for my own sake. I thought he was a dick.

But he wasn't wrong. Write down a list of why you want to start a company. I bet the list involves things like "building something nobody else has," "getting to program and design and do a bit of business-y stuff" or "freedom to work on what I want". That's only true when you start. Pretty soon, you're spending all day in meetings, and only a small portion of your time will go to the things you currently enjoy doing... and you'll feel guilty because there's something more important you should be doing. (Me? I'm currently procrastinating on an investor update, an H1B application and two performance reviews.) You'll spend more time writing emails than writing code. You end up bogged down in organizational issues, not dreaming up cool new features. Rather than having one boss, you now have dozens... investors, customers, employees, etc.

Oh, and the rejection. The non stop rejection. Every single day, hour, minute. Investors, customers, employees, potential employees. It's not personal, but it sure feels personal. Even when things are going great, there's tons of little micro-rejections, non-stop. I wish someone told me that.

It's really hard. I don't know a single founder who hasn't had relationship problems because of their company, or suffered from depression. Hanging out with founders is less like the TV show Silicon Valley, and more like group therapy.

This isn't to say you shouldn't do it. But just be prepared for what being a founder actually entails. Talk to a few founders of medium sized companies about how they're doing. If you're still on board, then maybe you're right for the job. For me, I wouldn't change a thing... I love it. It's incredibly hard, but there's a reason I haven't even thought of leaving. If you're the same way, then go for it!

But don't do it because you want to do it. Do it because you literally can't imagine not doing it.

(If you're doing it now and things are getting hard and you need someone to talk to, my email is in my bio :) )

If you're starting an electrical company, you're probably using off the shelf components and using tried and trusted techniques to install them. A tech startup is more closely equivalent to a company designing new electrical components. I wonder how many of those fail?

Title is a bit misleading, 3/4 of the arguments against being a founder in the article are conditions that may not apply.

1. Reliance on a co-founder is stressful 2. VC vs founder risk profile 3. Don't dropout to found a company

I think these all apply more to the "get rich quick" approach and sure, I agree that is a bit of a moonshot.

But instead of writing off founding, why not look at ways to mitigate risk? Complete an education, spend some years working in an industry, or start a bootstrapped company in a niche that you learn from the industry. Or any combination of those that fits your risk profile.

And have an exit plan in mind, for either the success story or the failure. That solves the sense of self- a calculated business plan that didn't work out does not have to be devestating.

Its talked about a lot because the VCs are out there beating a drum, as they should. Drawing a crowd. Hopefully an interesting one.

Once you get a crowd, everyone starts doing what the people around them do. Its natural. It takes some time and experience to figure out whether you need to be there or not.

The difference is in the HN-style (and Bay Area) understanding of the word "startup", which is focused on hyper growth at all costs or bust. Starting a small business in something like HVAC is very different in that you typically start small, with relatively low ambition, and grow the business organically over a long period of time. The latter is definitely difficult and sometimes stressful, but not in the same way as when you have investors pushing you to bump your revenue up by 10x in the next year or gtfo.