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What They Don’t Tell You About Starting a Startup

Aditya April 27th

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Most of the times when we discuss startups, we only discuss success stories. We just see the end result of entrepreneurs making multi-million dollars. We talk about what a great life that entrepreneur must be living now. We always neglect the other side of entrepreneurs’ life. The painful life.

I was discussing this painful part with my entrepreneurial friend the other day, who is juggling between building a successful company, managing his married life and coping up with his day job. We discussed how hard it is to balance both personal/married vs startup life, and how we should still try to find some ways to manage the balance and achieve our dreams.

James Currier, founder of Tickle gives following advice to someone who is considering starting a startup in a book Founders at Work -

It [starting a startup] is incredibly painful and it will take over your life. If you care about it and if you have any chance of succeeding, you will stop being present for the softer things in life like you family, friends, or dating life. And when you are there with them, you’re not really there with them; you’re thinking about this thing because you’re creating it, and it take that amount of passion to it work.

This is an incredibly truthful advice which is often neglected. When someone advises you about how to start a startup, they never tell you – how painful it is. I understand they don’t tell you this because they don’t want you to get de-motivated by this advice. Optimism is good, but I think if you know the other side of startup dream as well, then your dreams will be aligned to more of a reality world than the fantasy world.

Posted in Entrepreneurship, Tips for Students

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  • @Mattijs Naus and @All,

    I wrote that article because I'm experiencing few things that I wanted to share. I'm working on starting a startup, handling all marriage and day job responsibilities. I find it very challenging, but I still push myself because it's my character flaw - that I want to start a startup. To make this happen, I'm also looking for building a founding team. For that, I'm talking to few people who shared their interest of starting a startup.

    Whenever I talk to some young professional, the most common observation I have seen is - almost everyone wants to start a startup, literally almost everyone. But the fact is - they just don't know what it takes to make it work -- the insane hard work at initial stages. They just talk about success stories, but when it comes to put the time and build stuff, they disappear. And that's how I got inspired to share this thought on my blog.

    I am not saying we should take that advice seriously and stop working on our dreams. That advice was more for those people who "think" they want to start a startup, but probably don't understand the reality to make it happen.

    - Aditya, (Adeologue)
  • I somewhat agree with your article. I happen to be the co-organizer of Open Coffee Club events in Bangalore and while interacting with hundreds of entrepreneurs, this is something which has come up as a fact.
    Its painful, but where on this earth can you get huge gains without taking pains.
    Cheers
    Vaibhav
  • Mattijs Naus
    I completely disagree with your article. There are tons of real life example of entrepreneurs being successful in building a great company while still having enough time and energy to have a proper social life/family life.

    It's only the ridiculous sub-reality in the valley which is having people believe this is not possible. All these college dropouts hoping to become the next Google and going for the big payout, well... they would probably sell their souls to make this happen, let alone give up any existence outside their "startup".

    Finding something you love doing, finding a way to make some money while doing it and turning this into your main stream of income, does absolutely NOT means you have to kiss your social life/family life goodbye!
  • Yeah I completely agree on the fact that start up/projects do take a lot out of your personal life, but I also feel that if you do start a start up, you either give 100% to it or nothing as doing it like a hobby will not yield as much result as possible and ultimately fail. Please correct me if I am wrong. I am currently in this position - I have a start up (fictionthis.com), I also work full time and I do have a young family.

    Ilia
  • Probably the best book on entrepreneurial roller coaster is Barry Moltz's "You Have to Be a Little Crazy" which includes an excellent introduction by Howard Tullman that is directly on point to the real issues of entrepreneurship: Identity, Family, and Failure. Tullman notes "Identity is important because entrepreneurs constantly confuse what they do with who they are. We’re all certainly responsible for what we do but failing doesn’t make us bad people and succeeding doesn’t make us omniscient."

    Keeping in mind that no one wished they had spent more time at the office on their deathbed, Tullman notes "Family is important because it’s a much more important extension of ourselves than any work we’ll ever do. There’s always more work but you’ve only got one family." which is certainly counter to Currier's approach of subordinating family to startup.

    More on the book
    http://www.amazon.com/You-Need-Be-Little-Crazy/...

    More on Barry Moltz
    http://www.barrymoltz.com/

    Two blog entries I wrote relative to Moltz's book
    http://www.skmurphy.com/blog/2006/12/27/you-nee...
    http://www.skmurphy.com/blog/2007/10/16/the-cha...

    Moltz himself observes "Entrepreneurs start businesses because..they have no choice. Passion and energy drive them on good days and sustain them on bad days." I agree with his assessment: sometimes we pursue our dreams and sometimes they pursue us, but in neither case do most entrepreneurs have a real choice.
  • A painful amount of work it is... and money it takes.
  • A painful amount of work it is... and money it takes.
  • JD
    That's one more reason to be passionate(or addicted) about what you do if you want to build your startup. It makes the experience less painful, keeps you motivated most of the time and you end up doing things without realizing how much time you spent on these things.

    Passionate people can be high-risk takers in the eyes of others though passionate people themselves don't realize this.

    One more advice I will certainly add is to start a business as a side project or hobby. Don't get too involved and don't base your projects with success stories in mind because your project is starkling different from theirs and the circumstances in which you started are different from theirs too.

    The reason why most people talk about success stories is that it can motivate others to try sth out. I don't know any parents telling their kids you are going to fail when they are about to take an exam. Let others learn by their own mistakes is more reasonable than discouraging them from trying. Making mistakes and correcting them is what makes a mature entrepreneur.
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