Losing a Home and the Value of a Dollar
This is part 2 of a series of posts about starting Steadfast. Check out part 1 here — p.s. I get fired in that post!)
4 months before I was fired I moved into a beautiful apartment with my girlfriend (now fiancee). It was right in the middle of one of my favourite Neighbourhoods in Toronto, on one of my favourite streets — Madison ave.
It quickly became clear a couple months into creating Steadfast that living there was untenable and financially irresponsible. So Maggi and I packed up our things and got ready to couchsurf.
We ended up living together at both of our parents’ places for what ended up being 10 months.
Going back to my parents’ home was one of the hardest things I’ve done. I moved out as early as I could (2nd year university), opting to live in a room that measure 5 ft x 10 ft rather than continuing to live at home. Being self-reliant has always been important to me, so both asking for help and accepting that help stung. Giving up my independence was one of the biggest sacrifices I’ve had to make.
For that entire 10 months, plus the few months it took to find someone to take over our lease I earned about $0. My company also earned $0 — actually, less because I ended up borrowing money from my personal line of credit to pay for the cost of running Steadfast. Over that period of time I used and abused that line of credit up until I maxed it out at just over $10,000.
At one point I started delivering food for Hurrier (now known as Foodora) on my bike to get some cash into my very empty bank account. I froze my ass off for a few months delivering food downtown for about $14 an hour. Giving up evenings and weekends and a sense of warmth — another sacrifice I had to make.
Delivering food in the cold gives you a good reference point for how much a dollar is worth. The question, “Is this sandwich really worth 40 minutes of delivering food?” enters your mind when you’re grabbing lunch. You also think twice before grabbing a $6 drink when you’re at a your 4th tech meetup of the week.
In March 2016 we signed a deal with a corporate customer that gave us enough money to pay down what I owed and then some. We moved back downtown, and that was one of the happiest days of my life.
It didn’t matter to us that the walls weren’t painted, that the amenities weren’t open or that we couldn’t even afford any IKEA furniture at the time.
We were on our own again and it was perfect.
The hardest part of starting a startup isn’t the sacrifices you have to make — its the sacrifice you force other people to make for you.
Maggi didn’t ask for me to not have an income for a year and a half, she just had to figure out a way to deal with it. Our parents didn’t really have a choice, they had to take us in.
When you start on this kind of a journey its easy to get caught up in your own problems: not having a home, not having money, being stressed out from work.
Sure, I gave up a lot. But so did the people around me. The difference is that I had the privilege of choosing to start this journey. The people in my life didn’t, and its something I can’t and won’t forget.
