Computer Scientist to Founder
University really doesn’t prepare you for founding a company.
I studied Computer Science and what I got from my degree was a foundation in logic, problem solving and maybe some specialist knowledge in a particular subject (be it imaging or quantum computing etc. etc.).
Only some of these skills help you become a founder. Do you know what to do on day one? Do you know how to find customers? Do you know how to convince those customers you have what they want? And do you even know how to push production code?
Most of what I built at University hadn’t been used by anyone. Chances are you could say the same about anything that you’ve built. It has been an assignment or personal project that has been for the point of a grade or you’re own hobbyist tendencies. However, building something for other people brings a whole new dynamic to this experience. You’re building something to please other people and these people will rarely tell you what they want and whether they like it. Sounds like the worst freelance job ever right?
The best thing that university taught me is how to learn.
As a founder I’ve learnt something new everyday. This is what I’ve learnt so far: analytics, sales, pitching, web copywriting, SEO, Google Adwords, customer discovery techniques, interview techniques, hiring, talking to mentors, UX, design, how the property industry works, shipping production code and the list goes on. The list goes on so much that I’ve pretty much forgotten what I’ve learnt! I can only describe it as ‘absorbed’.
Learning how to write and push production code sounds like a supremely trivial point. But it’s not. I was lucky that I’d done some freelance work before starting EF and so this wasn’t too daunting. But there were ‘techies’ on this years cohort, and people who I interviewed for next year, who didn’t know how to set up an AWS instance or deploy with Heroku or use multiple Git branches for staging, production and extra features. You have to learn these things fast. If you don’t know about them now, go and learn. As a technical co-founder you need to know everything about the product, how it works and the technicalities behind it.
And don’t think that just because you’re a computer scientist and consider yourself a ‘techie’ this means that is all you’ll be doing. Be prepared to get stuck into every aspect of the business and don’t worry if you don’t know what you’re doing, you’ll learn, you have to!
No one is grading you anymore.
This may seem obvious but even in a typical career you have someone analysing your performance every month, every quarter or whenever.
As a programmer this means you have to analyse your performance either using metrics or your own deadlines or both. Using metrics is a pretty obvious choice; did what I do this week increase conversion? On top of this I set myself 1 week sprints. If a feature can’t be done in 1 week then it’s not worth it or you have to find a quicker way to do it. Force yourself to analyse your performance and stick to deadlines.
Even with all this, if you talk to any of the cohort (I’m on Entrepreneur First) this year what you’ll hear most is uncertainty we cope with every day. You won’t be sure what to focus on, whether you’re doing anything right and there will be times where you won’t know whether anything you’re doing makes any difference whatsoever… to anything.
Advisors may help but they won’t have the answer either. At the end of the day, you have to just deal with it, push through and trust yourself. You need to be 100% confident in yourself and your ability.
Don’t panic.
Seriously.. don’t panic. As the months go you’ll change, you’ll learn things. Part of what has made this blog post so hard to write is that I have had no idea that it has happened to me, but it has.
Overall, computer science teaches you a lot. Unfortunately most of what you need as a founder you learn by doing it.
