The Discouraging Days of a Startup
My cofounder Jeffrey and I have been working on Blue Seat together full-time since August 2014 and part-time since April 2012. I am the CEO, which doesn’t mean a whole lot right now operationally except that I am the ultimate defender of the company vision.
We are currently in fundraising mode. We are talking to anyone we can about the business opportunity and trying to convince people to give us money in exchange for a promise that we can build a great company that is valuable beyond our wildest dreams.
Building something from scratch is incredibly difficult, something Peter Thiel calls going from zero to one. Trying to convince people that this new thing that did not exist before will somehow grow up to be a thriving business can be excruciating.
We are in the beginning stages of the process of fundraising and building a company. We are not on the other side yet, and the journey ahead will be a long, arduous one. I think only entrepreneurs who have been through this journey understand the kind of mental, emotional and physical toll it takes.
We are in the thick of it. Someday I hope to write a post about how great and fun it is to be on the other side, but that is not today.
My confidence in the vision for Blue Seat has been on a steady growth for 2.5 years. That is why I am still going and will continue down this path for the foreseeable future. But the confidence in the vision is separate from the ability to execute on that vision. There are days when I feel like I can take on the entire world and convince anyone of our vision and days when I feel like I can’t convince anyone and we will not only fail but, even worse, fade away slowly into the darkness. On the scale of days, today is closer to the latter.
It’s important for me to capture these moments and share them with you. I feel incredibly discouraged today. In times like these you start to ask yourself what in the hell you are doing. Am I in the right city? Am I talking to the right people? Can we actually do this? Are we investing all of our time and energy into a bad idea?
You start to feel alone. It feels as though you have a secret that is really important and that you want to share with everyone but as much as you try to convince them of it they just can’t see it.
You start to get frustrated. Why can’t they see it? Either you are a lunatic or you are failing to convince them yet that you are not. Neither are pleasant experiences.
It’s hard to be rejected. There’s a lot of rejection when you are fundraising. It’s hard to not absorb that on a personal level. This company is my life. There’s very little separation for founders and when others reject your vision you start to wonder why you are devoting your life to this thing that seems so hard to convince others of its greatness.
But you have to press on.
For 2.5 years Jeffrey and I have been laying down tracks, hammering railroad ties into the ground one by one. Now, the train is moving. It’s chuggling along slowly and parts are flying off and we are trying desperately to fix things as we pick up speed. But I’m sure as hell not jumping off.
The reason the fundraising process is excruciating is because I believe in the vision so deeply. I so badly want people around me to believe in it too and join me in reaping the long-term benefits of it. It’s challenging to convince people that this slow-moving train with bolts flying off of it will ever become anything more because it’s so difficult for all of us to imagine a future much different than our current reality.
There’s no great conclusion to this post. My intention is only to give you an honest glimpse inside of my mind. It’s important for me to be honest, maybe the most important thing.
