What Startups Are Really Like

[What Startups Are Really Like]

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| Want to start a startup? Get funded by
Y Combinator. |

October 2009

(This essay is derived from a talk at the 2009 Startup School.)

I wasn't sure what to talk about at Startup School, so I decided
to ask the founders of the startups we'd funded. What hadn't I
written about yet?

I'm in the unusual position of being able to test the essays I write
about startups. I hope the ones on other topics are right, but I
have no way to test them. The ones on startups get tested by about
70 people every 6 months.

So I sent all the founders an email asking what surprised them about
starting a startup. This amounts to asking what I got wrong, because
if I'd explained things well enough, nothing should have surprised
them.

I'm proud to report I got one response saying:

What surprised me the most is that everything was actually
fairly predictable!

The bad news is that I got over 100 other responses listing the
surprises they encountered.

There were very clear patterns in the responses; it was remarkable
how often several people had been surprised by exactly the same
thing. These were the biggest:

1. Be Careful with Cofounders

This was the surprise mentioned by the most founders. There were
two types of responses: that you have to be careful who you pick
as a cofounder, and that you have to work hard to maintain your
relationship.

What people wished they'd paid more attention to when choosing
cofounders was character and commitment, not ability. This was
particularly true with startups that failed. The lesson: don't
pick cofounders who will flake.

Here's a typical reponse:

You haven't seen someone's true colors unless you've worked
with them on a startup.

The reason character is so important is that it's tested more
severely than in most other situations. One founder said explicitly
that the relationship between founders was more important than
ability:

I would rather cofound a startup with a friend than a stranger
with higher output. Startups are so hard and emotional that
the bonds and emotional and social support that come with
friendship outweigh the extra output lost.

We learned this lesson a long time ago. If you look at the YC
application, there are more questions about the commitment and
relationship of the founders than their ability.

Founders of successful startups talked less about choosing cofounders
and more about how hard they worked to maintain their relationship.

One thing that surprised me is how the relationship of startup
founders goes from a friendship to a marriage. My relationship
with my cofounder went from just being friends to seeing each
other all the time, fretting over the finances and cleaning up
shit. And the startup was our baby. I summed it up once like
this: "It's like we're married, but we're not fucking."

Several people used that word "married." It's a far more intense
relationship than you usually see between coworkers—partly because
the stresses are so much greater, and partly because at first the
founders are the whole company. So this relationship has to be
built of top quality materials and carefully maintained. It's the
basis of everything.

2. Startups Take Over Your Life

Just as the relationship between cofounders is more intense than
it usually is between coworkers, so is the relationship between the
founders and the company. Running a startup is not like having a
job or being a student, because it never stops. This is so foreign
to most people's experience that they don't get it till it happens.
[1]

I didn't realize I would spend almost every waking moment either
working or thinking about our startup. You enter a whole
different way of life when it's your company vs. working for
someone else's company.

It's exacerbated by the fast pace of startups, which makes it seem
like time slows down:

I think the thing that's been most surprising to me is how one's
perspective on time shifts. Working on our startup, I remember
time seeming to stretch out, so that a month was a huge interval.

In the best case, total immersion can be exciting:

It's surprising how much you become consumed by your startup,
in that you think about it day and night, but never once does
it feel like "work."

Though I have to say, that quote is from someone we funded this
summer. In a couple years he may not sound so chipper.

3. It's an Emotional Roller-coaster

This was another one lots of people were surprised about. The ups
and downs were more extreme than they were prepared for.

In a startup, things seem great one moment and hopeless the next.
And by next, I mean a couple hours later.

The emotional ups and downs were the biggest surprise for me.
One day, we'd think of ourselves as the next Google and dream
of buying islands; the next, we'd be pondering how to let our
loved ones know of our utter failure; and on and on.

The hard part, obviously, is the lows. For a lot of founders that
was the big surprise:

How hard it is to keep everyone motivated during rough days or
weeks, i.e. how low the lows can be.

After a while, if you don't have significant success to cheer you
up, it wears you out:

Your most basic advice to founders is "just don't die," but the
energy to keep a company going in lieu of unburdening success
isn't free; it is siphoned from the founders themselves.

There's a limit to how much you can take. If you get to the point
where you can't keep working anymore, it's not the end of the world.
Plenty of famous founders have had some failures along the way.

4. It Can Be Fun

The good news is, the highs are also very high. Several founders
said what surprised them most about doing a startup was how fun it
was:

I think you've left out just how fun it is to do a startup. I
am more fulfilled in my work than pretty much any of my friends
who did not start companies.

What they like most is the freedom:

I'm surprised by how much better it feels to be working on
something that is challenging and creative, something I believe
in, as opposed to the hired-gun stuff I was doing before. I
knew it would feel better; what's surprising is how much better.

Frankly, though, if I've misled people here, I'm not eager to fix
that. I'd rather have everyone think starting a startup is grim
and hard than have founders go into it expecting it to be fun, and
a few months later saying "This is supposed to be fun? Are you
kidding?"

The truth is, it wouldn't be fun for most people. A lot of what
we try to do in the application process is to weed out the people
who wouldn't like it, both for our sake and theirs.

The best way to put it might be that starting a startup is fun the
way a survivalist training course would be fun, if you're into that
sort of thing. Which is to say, not at all, if you're not.

5. Persistence Is the Key

A lot of founders were surprised how important persistence was in
startups. It was both a negative and a positive surprise: they were
surprised both by the degree of persistence required

Everyone said how determined and resilient you must be, but
going through it made me realize that the determination required
was still understated.

and also by the degree to which persistence alone was able to
dissolve obstacles:

If you are persistent, even problems that seem out of your
control (i.e. immigration) seem to work themselves out.

Several founders mentioned specifically how much more important
persistence was than intelligence.

I've been surprised again and again by just how much more
important persistence is than raw intelligence.

This applies not just to intelligence but to ability in general,
and that's why so many people said character was more important in
choosing cofounders.

6. Think Long-Term

You need persistence because everything takes longer than you expect.
A lot of people were surprised by that.

[...]

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