9-5 by day, startup by night. How do you cope?
Here I am working on a startup at nights and am close to launch but my day job is eating most of my time and energy. The feeling as it is so close to release is butterflies and excitement but then remember the day job and then it hits me; feelings of stomach churn as I can only dream of how cool it would be if I
could work on it full time.
I don't believe that I am the first founder to experience this so I am asking HNers: how do you cope with the emotions at this level of the game?
38 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 82.6 ms ] threadAbove all, enjoy the experience, have fun, and learn about yourself and others. Good luck and keep asking question when you have them, just one easy way to learn more than you knew before!
The metric to watch isn't how secure it makes you feel. It's growth. A startup is a company designed to grow.
One advantage a full time job offers is you can afford to take the risk of building something daring that takes more time to identify. A funded startup pressured for growth might otherwise miss this part.
The constraint of having little free time makes you work only on what's important. Which incidentally is how some of the best skunkworks projects produced results. Constraint is an advantage in creativity.
As for coping with the emotions, launch sooner rather than later so you know how far off you are from something useful. One of the worst emotions is launching late and realizing you could have stayed in a mode of building without feedback nearly infinitely. The launch is good training for the emotions because you'll realize how unreliable they can be in the absence of data. And always have at least one active user.
And exercise, and grow disciplined with sleep, preferably starting the day hacking because not only does it awake your mind but you give more of the benefit of new ideas to your startup rather than the day job.
I have noticed that by being constrained on my time that I have not touched frivolous features. The core product is quiet lean but is working great so far as an MVP.
Thanks for the great comments.
The fear of putting something out in the world isn't only an inevitable part of creation but also a necessary one.
http://blog.redbubble.com/2014/04/daily-inspiration-agnes-ma...
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2014/03/31/agnes-mart...
I can relate to forcing focus on time management. I've got little for everything else but I'm only focused on the long term so I know there is light at the end of the tunnel.
You are completely right. These days and with my hormones completely abnormal, butterflies and raw emotion are non-existent. I almost feel robotic.
Not to make light of their situation, but I imagine it wouldn't be so unbearable if one worked at Google and is highly compensated, and still had to work on their start up on the side. The crux of the problem is dissatisfaction of the day job, not the amount of work hours.
Generally migrant workers know that they can save money and live better, relatively. Whereas in a dead end day job you know your situation doesn't improve, even if it is in absolute terms better than a migrant's life.
We're made to look forward to something better.
Unless you have a startup in which case it makes the balance difficult. We have offices in 40 countries and measured that China/HK work the longest. (Well over the 10k sample size to make it relevant and excluding factory workers.)
I'd say try to adjust your schedule to allow (at least) 7 hour good quality sleep[1] and at least 45-75 minutes of exercise daily.
You'll have 15:30 hours free :-)
[1] Getting a good sleep involves a good bed, freshly oxygenated room, right temperature, no room, no iphones/ipads/e-devices, no video-games, no-movies etc.
7 hours of sleep with a full time job, a startup, kids and exercise? Is this even possible! One great life-hack we have is to sleep with the windows open and with thinner sheets. We both feel more refreshed the next day. And apart from the alarm clock, there are no devices :)
Whatever works for you!!! Meditation it is!!! (will try also!).
Have you looked into High Intensity Training? That allows you to pack solid, proven exercise techniques into very short spaces of time.
I am glad that I waited to work on a startup now because my knowledge and experience have given me confidence that I can pull it off. Earlier on in life and I would have been running on pure hubris.
What I'm trying to say is: if you don't make sure your work/life balance is balanced right now, it probably won't be balanced in the future. And it probably will leave a mark on the bond between you, your spouse and your children. Realize that you can never get back the time watching your children grow up.
We're in the same situation. I'm also in my mid-30's, two kids, a job and a mortgage. I spend my commuting time on my startup, and all the time I can get when everyone's asleep. It was hard at first, but now I have developed a routine that works for me. I may not be able to work as many hours on my startup as someone with less obligations, but the hours I do have I spend incredibly productive and efficient. I love working on my startup, but until it makes enough money for me to quit my job, it's family first, startup second.
If not: The only key word is "Determination","Where there's a will, there's a way"
Still I have some tips for you:
1) Increase your physical activities(Imp), go to job and in night work on startup.
2) "Time is money", Move near to your work place.. etc
3) Live with your co-founders (or Girlfriend or Love ones)
4) Keep some spare time to meet your loved one, it keeps you motivated.
5) Focus on correct things, 80-20 Rule. 20% Task get your 80% work done.
6) Work with a velocity that you can control. One should know his/her limits.
7) There are points in time where things don't seem to be going well, in such times its only you who can help yourself. Be determined
:) Cheers & Best of Luck !!!Eat good Food :)
Suggestion 2: be creative and think of alternative ways of financing your startup work that are less demanding of your time. For example, find a job that pays better so you can save more for later when you want to start your enterprise.
2) That's a good point. I have considered looking at the funding route but with being so close to launch it feels like I'm wasting equity when all I need to do is just temporarily put aside these emotions and keep on trucking.
Some of the things we practiced were: a. keep aggressive but realistic goals for every week. b. utilize weekends to achieve 70% of the goals c. in our 9-5 day, we had atleast an hour or two of opportunity where we could have done some additional work to meet our weekly goals. for eg - talking to freelancers & reviewing their work just after lunch, talking to prospective clients during some coffee breaks, etc. d. do give yourself a couple of lighter days to relax & look forward to the thrill of your excitement.
Cheers buddy & good luck.
"Statistically, if you want to avoid failure, it would seem like the most important thing is to quit your day job. Most founders of failed startups don't quit their day jobs, and most founders of successful ones do. If startup failure were a disease, the CDC would be issuing bulletins warning people to avoid day jobs."
A MVP with some traction and a solid business model is all you need.