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A day in the life of a startup founder

633 points by jgrahamc ↗ HN
(The following is parody of recent posts, it is not meant as criticism of any individual but as commentary on what I see as an unhealthy obsession with the habits of others and of people taking themselves and others in the 'startup community' a bit too seriously)

0523 Alarm sounds on my iPhone 4GS. I don't use just any alarm program: I use Biorythym Alarm System+ which monitors my internal body clock and starts ringing at the appropriate time before 0523 to begin an in tune start to the day. It uses Gregorian chants, nature sounds and recordings from inside the womb to ease me into the day.

0530 I'm in front of my MacBook Air (with 256GB SSD) at my desk made from recycled lumber from South African railway tracks. Why did I get up 7 minutes earlier? Because, as Manic Minute Minder Pro reminds me 7 minutes wasted per day 1.7 extra days of productive time per year. 1.7 days when the competition is literally sleeping!

I drink a large bowl of Jing Tea Matcha Supreme Green and a glass of organic milk. At 0533 every day I'm hacking through my email, TODOs, tweets and catching up on Hacker News. Every 20 minutes Time Out reminds me to stop, meditate and focus.

0645 I walk into my bedroom with a green tea for my wife Cassiopeia who is waking up. We smile at each other and spend the next 15 minutes on One on One Time. At 0700 it's time to wake our two boys: Dagwood and Spaniel.

0800 The house is quiet but Skype isn't. I stay in contact with my teams in Costa Rica, Montreal and Goa via Skype throughout the day. This morning check in with the teams gives me a good view of where the business is. Currently we're in double stealth mode (the public doesn't know what we're building and neither do we).

0830 I jog down to the ground floor of our New York brownstone and get on my Trek Madone 4 series bike for a 30 mile ride out into New Jersey and back. My iPhone 4GS is cued up with a set of daily business podcasts set to run at double speed so I can get through all of them in the hour's ride.

0930 Shower and then spiritual time. I have a small shrine set up that allows me to focus on the important. I light an incense and gaze up at posters of Tim Ferriss, Kevin Rose and Warren Buffet.

0945 The day really begins. For here on in it's meetings, hirings, firings, networking with the New York VC and angel crowd until 1900 when C, D & S (or cease and desist as I call them) come back home. We eat together and at 2200 I'm in bed with a light cucumber mask and the alarm set for another day.

Tonight's a little special because I've been invited to give a one hour keynote on being a startup CEO at Velocipede Ventures weekly Pumped and Primed meetup for other successful entrepreneurs like me.

133 comments

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ahmedaly
I wonder what is the different between a CEO and founder in the small startups? Or its a matter of company structure?
pmjordan
CEO sounds more impressive.

In fairness, there will usually be one founder who is the de facto leader. Democracy, although fair, is inefficient. So I guess "CEO" is shorthand for "the founder who is in charge".

Negitivefrags
I've always found the CEO title somewhat ostentatious in a company with less than 10-20 people. President is even worse.

I prefer to term Founder or Director.

That said, I'm from New Zealand where the standard term for the head of a company is Managing Director, so anyone calling themselves a CEO here is probably just wanting to sound important.

arethuza
I think the habit of using CxO job titles stems from most technology startups having a view to being involved, one way or another, with the US where these titles are the norm and things like "Director" tend to be mid-level management positions.
ryall
Cool, another kiwi on here. Just wanted to say hi, downvote as required
tatsuke95
Agreed.

When I went to my first tech conference, I couldn't understand how people walked around with CEO on their name tag, yet that company sometimes consisted of themselves and one other employee. To this day, that annoys me (probably more than it should).

The rule of thumb should be: If you have no board of directors, you have no CEO.

Founder will suffice.

wtvanhest
The Managing Director title is used for very senior positions in finance firms in the US. Sort of equivalent to partner in law firms.

Finding the title CEO ostentatious is fine, but a company with 20 people is a big company. I have never managed anything that large. If someone is running that sized company, by all means, they should call themselves a CEO if that is what they are comfortable with.

At the end of the day they need some title, and CEO works as well as founder, president etc.

georgespencer
> I've always found the CEO title somewhat ostentatious in a company with less than 10-20 people.

It is.

My startup is a team of six, and soon to be seven. One of the team once asked me what his job title should be. I told him to make it up himself. It doesn't matter what your title is. It matters what your role is.

These wanky "05:00 herb tea CEO" posts are the equivalent of titles (and tantamount to linkbait IMO). The value contributed is the equivalent of the role.

Or, put another way: it doesn't matter how you do what you do. It matters what you do.

alexhawket
I'm a Canadian in New Zealand.

Rather hilariously, in typical imperial/metric, schizophrenic Canadian style, there's quite a few joint CEO/Managing Directors back home.

Managing Director itself is funny. Which is it? Are you managing a bunch of directors? Or barely managing to direct?

pmjordan
I assume you're aware that "managing director" is technically a member of the board of directors of the company (a director) who also manages the day-to-day operations of the company, unlike non-managing directors (e.g. investors).
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asto
No difference. CEO is when the founder likes to call himself that! Think about it - CHIEF EXECUTIVE Officer. Required only when you have many executive officers and you need a chief for them.

Funnily, here in Bangalore, there are so many startups with only CxOs working for the company/firm. So I guess they'er quite literally all Chiefs and no Indians then! :-)

stevoski
I was the sole employee at a consulting firm run by a team of 3. The called themselves:

- CEO - CIO - CTO

I was "Senior Consultant". It was ludicrous.

sanswork
I work in a small start up where I am one of 3 owners. I have a CEO(I am a CTO) and my CEOs role is pretty much as follows. CEO spends the day pumping contacts from previous business relationships to setup new deals for the company. Afternoon he spends an hour with me the CTO to plan technical strategy before settling down and doing his daily work as a team member.

My CEO is a manager who is able to mentor me(a tech guy) in management and leadership skills while still managing to keep up connections with third parties and perform a number of technical/business functions we reserve for his role.

geoffw8
A CEO is a job with a predefined role, a founder, technically isn't. I know technically they overlap, but having worked in a business where there was a CEO AND a founder, it helps you see the boundaries.

If you ask me CEO is douchey if its a team of just "guys getting started". So I go with founder. When you get proper employees, its time to wear that CEO badge.

eldios
geez if that's life my daytime is all screwed up :>
dr_faustus
Sounds exactly like my day, except I get up an hour earlier to reread my favorite chapters of "Art of War" and I go to sleep an two hours later which I spend getting inspired by amazing TED talks or Udacity courses about one thing or another.
mattm
I liked double stealth mode
ATPase
just 15 minutes for one on one? you're getting old .. ;-)
tedkulp
When you've got two kids, you're lucky if you get that much. :)
rodolphoarruda
twice a week, right? A daily one-on-one with two kids at home is barely impossible.
gooddaysir
Ah, double stealth. I've been in that mode for awhile (except I call it "languishing").
mbenjaminsmith
Yeah I just went back to the drawing board with one of my companies. It's in double stealth as well. Had a good laugh when I read it.
raheemm
Looking forward to Ryan Carson's response.
jgrahamc
He has nothing to respond to. His was just one of many such posts and posts of the 'life hacker' movement. I was parodying a general sense of 'taking ourselves too seriously' that comes about through the posts themselves and through them getting upvoted highly on Hacker News.
davidw
Laughing at it would be the only reasonable response: it's not at all mean-spirited.
[dead] jacques_chester
Sounds like some that could be submitted to a hypothetical /r/hncirclejerk. Bravo.
simonbarker87
Loving double stealth mode - is triple stealth when your VCs don't even know what your doing I wonder?
arethuza
I thought double stealth would be like "encrypting" using double ROT13.
dgabriel
Ah yes, the old ROT26 encryption.
arethuza
It's the latest "best practise" for storing passwords - extremely efficient and almost impossible to implement incorrectly.
rapind
This sentence was encrypted using ROT26.
arethuza
Encryption so cunning that you can't actually tell that stuff has been encrypted!
grogs
Hah, that's actually a thing (steganography). That full stop is actually a microdot.
mdda
Or perhaps the company could have a superb MVP up, addressing a huge market, while behind the scenes (double stealth) they're building a lame idea for real.
luis_ca
Triple is when VC's don't even know they invested
simonbarker87
Excellent! We're not even in stealth mode and I sometimes think our VCs have forgotten they invested
sfny
Take the money and run!
bobsil1
Met a VC recently who snarked that another fund invests in competitors because they can't remember what's in their portfolio.
mutru
No, that's just business as usual.
basicallydan
For anybody who thinks this is a dig, it clearly isn't. It's just satire, and it's funny :)
guillermovs
Heheheh, brilliant stuff. Loved the double stealth :D
shin_lao
This reminds me of the American Psycho's introduction.
hef19898
Great read! But you should have gone more into detail, like where the Warren poster is exactly positioned. And really left your team in Timbuktu ot of the picture.

Like it! ;-)

mrgreenfur
Thanks for this valuable insights! It's great to know that it's possible to run a wildly successful business and still have time for 15-minutes of one-on-one with your wife. You seem to love your family very much. I myself am trying to be a wildly successfully founder and it's very helpful to know how early you wake up and all your little secrets (I have a Trek Madone 4 too!). These are hte kind of innovations that will lift my startup into the VC cloud too!
rodolphoarruda
I like the Trek Madone part. I do the same type of "getaway" on my luch breaks and go for a 20 mile ride.
antr
John,

you just made my day.

Thank you

edw519
The problem with stuff like this isn't that there are a lot of details, it's just that: they're details, not issues.

There's nothing wrong with details: all the little hacks that work for us that we can share and copy. They're fun and cool and can really help.

But make no mistake about it: details are not issues.

Examples of details:

  - when I wake up
  - what I eat
  - how I exercise
  - my set-up
  - my preferences
  - my life hacks
  - how my team is organized
  - how we communicate
  - what I read
  - where we go
  - tips & tricks
Examples of issues:

  - the value I produced for my paying customers
Frankly, I'd rather talk about issues.
malarkeyking
It's a joke?
vecinu
No, he is referring to other posts that seriously focus on details rather than values.

OP posted a satire version of the commentary based on serious previous discussions.

swombat
He's replying to an imaginary strawman. OP never suggested that the details matter, or in fact said anything about details. Seems to me like edw519 is having his own separate discussion that's only vaguely related to the topic :-)
mindcrime
There's nothing wrong with details: all the little hacks that work for us that we can share and copy. They're fun and cool and can really help.

But make no mistake about it: details are not issues.

But... is there any requirement that every post to HN be fully deep, weighty, intellectually challenging issues?? Sure, this crowd loves a good intellectual debate (too much so, most of the time), but there is also a practical, down-to-earth side to the crowd here... actual entrepreneurs who are in the middle of building companies, and who find reading about the experiences of others useful, even if they serve as nothing but inspiration, or encouragement.

Sure, a post like the earlier @ryancarson post is mostly details... but so what? That doesn't mean it isn't a valuable post to some of the members here. Maybe it wasn't for everybody, but here's a thought: no piece of content that gets posted here is interesting to everybody.

Frankly, I'd rather talk about issues.

So would I, most of the time. But that doesn't mean that the occasional "details" post deserves this much angst and controversy.

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david_shaw
Okay, I've spent the better part of the morning mulling this over while doing other work. Really, it's not as pathetic as it sounds.

This is a funny parody that highlights the shortcomings of the "wantrepreneurial" spirit. Everyone wants to be inspired by these posts, and many people like talking about how they're "living the startup life," instead of actually building anything.

Now, here's where I disagree with a lot of the responses, to some extent even edw519 (whom I greatly respect). I personally find legitimate "day in the life" posts inspirational. Are they sometimes silly? Yes. Are they sometimes just a waste of time? Absolutely. Do they spur drive to wake up earlier, be more productive, and create awesome products? It depends, but for me, they do.

I got a chuckle out of this parody, but I hope that HN posters don't take the general response to this post to mean "oh, no one cares about my daily life." If there's nothing unique in it, maybe you don't need to post, but just like I like learning how my coding heroes get their productive work done, I also like learning how founders frame their work/home balance.

Just my $0.02 :)

ryancarson
Touché :)
_sentient
For what it's worth, I personally like reading detailed, "a day in the life" descriptions from productive individuals. It helps add a personal quality to the usual startup narrative.

As someone who is planning on having kids in the next year, I also appreciate seeing how other people manage to juggle their work amidst the rigors of parenthood. I'm not much a morning person, but that made me want to start waking up earlier. :)

bhousel
We just had our first baby 7 months ago. Parenthood does throw off your work-life balance, but you will still get free time sometimes, you just need to be focused and patient and organized. Teamwork between you and your partner is key.

Also, nothing will improve your quality of life more than establishing a habit of waking up early and exercising.