What I learnt from running a start-up (1/2)
So my first proper start-up experience ended about five months ago and I think I’m ready to talk about it.
Why so long to talk about it? Well I failed. I mean we’ll call it a hiatus for a while longer, and maybe an amazing developer who wants to donate hundreds of hours of time to it will still appear (email me if that’s you), otherwise I’ll be ready to actually close the business down at some point.
While The Gifting Co. stops taking up all my workday hours towards the end of January, the realities of failure, finding a form of regular income (normal people call it employment), getting settled in at a new workplace, rediscovering friends and what relaxing midweek evening are all took a bit of time. In fact it took until the Monday just gone that I thought…
I learnt a lot, some good, some bad and I’m ready now to get it out of my head some things that I haven’t seen others talk about. I’ve thought about it in three ways, what did I confirm I already knew, what I know now that I didn’t before and what I still don’t get.
Once I started writing it turned out to be a lot of words, so I’m breaking it up into a couple of blog posts. Today the easy ones, the things I confirmed I already knew.
The entrepreneur as a hero myth helps no one
“Oh wow, it must be so rewarding. Sounds scary, getting investment must have been like the Dragon’s Den. It must be great being your own boss.”
Rewarding? If your business is in the black, you’ve given all your investors large returns, you’ve provided real job security to your team and your mortgage is paid off I’m sure it is. But I failed, and quickly, which left a very talented employee and myself without incomes. Of course the same self-made billionaires we all know about have, but most founders haven’t ticked off all the above.
To the second one, no. It isn’t. Not at all. Ever. Even the Dragon’s Den isn’t like the Dragon’s Den. Lots of their deals fall through during contract negotiations — it isn’t all about capital in exchange for shareholdings you know.
I had investors. Staff. Customers. Oh, and a landlady. The idea behind ‘being your own boss’ is that you’re in control, and I wasn’t at any point in control. I was accountable to my investors, staff, customers and landlady to deliver. I rightly felt the pressure to do right by all of them.
You’ll never stop me paying someone a fair wage for fair work
A lot of start-ups still don’t pay interns/early staff. “But they’ll get a lot of experience.” Of course, me too, I’m still getting paid.
I’m here to make money, and investors expect me to as well. I need a job doing to help me do that, so why won’t I compensate them as they help me do it?
On a practical level, I would also be shrinking the talent. Either I’m reducing the available talent pool to people independently wealthy, or I’m creating financial problems for them so they’ll be distracted from working.
So I’ll always pay at least a living wage, thank you.
Generalists. Can. Succeed.
I’ve spent an entire career fighting to market expectation to be ever more specialist in one element or other of digital. Organisations clamour for specialists and on one level I do understand why but I’m interested in and good at lots of things and in addition to that being the right thing for me as I grow my leadership skills, understanding lots of areas means I can approach specialist tasks in different ways.
Having broad interest in product, marketing, design, project management, branding, reporting as well as public policy, video product, story telling, political campaigning — to list a selection of things that I have at least a little professional experience doing. LOTS of specialisms are basically trying to do the same thing but from different angles. Being able to mix and match them can get great results and ensure things get done quickly rather than doing things the perfect way slowly.
