3 Years in

5 min readFeb 29, 2016

Today marks three years since I said goodbye to my previous gig to start Loggi.

I’d like to say time flew but honestly, it hasn’t. So much has happened, it feels like ten years, not three.

Anniversaries are meant for reflection — celebrations live elsewhere. Being my first startup experience, I thought I'd see how my initial expectations fared against the real thing.

I’m plenty aware how general balances means shit. Loggi has, thankfully , done well, and that inevitably taints my perspective. Had it gone sour, and none of this would make sense. Survivor bias, no sampling and just about every other conceivable reasoning flaw. That said, there’s probably some value here regardless.

Hard

I though doing a startup would be hard. And it has.
Yet, somehow, it doesn’t feel hard. I’ve had harder times in other jobs. I’ve held high pressure positions , been my own boss and always I've been intense about work. It’s possible that any — or all three — of these eased the pain somewhat.

Assessing hardship is tricky. We tend to overrate it during difficult moments, just to diminish it soon after. It is directly related to stress and suffering. But being fully in charge actually makes things easier. It sucks to be responsible for the outcome when others are making decisions for you. Common sense says responsibility is a burden, when in reality it’s anything but. Responsibility is freedom: frightening but liberating.

Motivation definitely matters. Unless you have deep internal motivation, daily difficulties will become strenuous, you’ll wish you were doing something else. You'll feel tired. Bam.

Autonomy and internal motivation are paramount.

Fun

I expected Loggi to be fun but, by and large, it has been way more fun than anticipated.

Again, this is a problem you picked, back to motivation.

Unsurprisingly, autonomy is at play again. Being in control of your own choices makes it possible to create a culture that you feel good about. You hire people you want to work with, and work in a way that makes sense for your team.

Fun is the end result of being hard (just enough to be possible but not too easy), a positive and optimistic culture, and constant progress. At a startup, you’re in control of all three, there’s no excuse for you leaving fun out of it.

Growth

Loggi has grown over 19% month over month for over 30 months now. This is commonly called hyper growth.

Hyper growth is a very peculiar experience. Unless you've been there, nothing quite prepares you for it. Intuitions are useless when doubling size every couple of months. Few decisions hold true growing this fast.

You can see this in a myriad of different contexts: from the technical architecture, to your team’s culture all the way to office space(7 offices in 2 years, pfew).

You’re constantly rethinking previous choices. Letting go of the sunken cost fallacy — and inertia — is tough and takes discipline.

Complexity is the real danger. Whatever scale you’re using to measure growth, complexity grows faster. Things are deeply interdependent, even seemingly unrelated stuff. Unless you keep it under control it will swamp you. You must get better faster than complexity itself is growing. This forces you to be smarter, more efficient, nimbler.

This is the one under rated skill Silicon Valley has mastered. Going from 2 people to 2000 in 4 years is incredibly hard. Innovation in management is as crucial as it is in technology. Nobody learns it by spending years on just any job. The pool of talent you can bootstrap from is awfully small, since few folks from traditional companies have the relevant experience. That’s why every great technology company ends up forging it’s own hiring and work culture. Survival demands it.

Dealing with growth has def been much harder than I could ever imagine. To be honest, I never thought we'd grow this fast.

People

This is where I totally missed the mark. Between being a loner and being skeptical of the pool talent in Brazil, I never thought people would be the thing I’d enjoy the most.

It goes way beyond the product team. I’m thinking of folks doing other critical work: ops, sales, partners and drivers.

Having never dealt with investors previously, I thought they would be some necessary evil.
Boy, was I wrong!
Investors are among the smartest, most interesting people I’ve met. If that’s not your own experience, then start looking for new ones. They’re definitely there. Good investors think long term and are keenly aware of the team’s crucial role in the final outcome. Unless you fucked up fund raising, or you’re tanking, your interests will be aligned. They have as much to gain as you. A partnership , not an adversarial relationship.

Awesome people are everywhere: other entrepreneurs, journalists, mentors. It is true that the startup world is very generous when it comes to sharing knowledge and experience.

The talent pool in Brazil is nothing like the Valley (is anywhere else?), but there are lots of smart people around. Just because you don’t read about them in Techcrunch it doesn’t mean they aren’t there.

And finally: customers. Yes, dealing with consumer feedback can be draining. But seeing real people using — and talking about — what you build is magical. By the end of 2015 many people I knew or met were customers. That felt great. And yes, I’m talking about people outside the industry. Even in dating apps many of my convos turned out to be with customers ( feels awkward btw 😋). We even did campaigns out of customer testimonials.

Money

While I never saw money as the primary drive to start a company, it seemed damn important.

I certainly hope there’s a positive financial outcome for us. However, money has faded to the background. I never think about it anymore. Nothing beats inner motivation. Be it pride, craftsmanship, the challenge, or a sense of responsibility, money is not what will keep you going.

Even if Loggi were to tank, it would have been absolutely worth it.