Please Stop Asking Me And Other Early Stage Startup Founders, “How Is Your Startup Doing?”
Imagine for a second that you’re 150 pounds overweight. You’re fat. You have rolls on your stomach and extra flaps on your arms.
And maybe you do have some weight to lose. But imagine for a moment that you’re truly obese. You’re about to start your diet. A lifestyle change, as you’re reminded to call it.
When you start, everyone is excited for you. You’re excited.
For the first few weeks when people find out you’re losing weight they give you suggestions, based on their own experiences. “Oh, are you drinking green tea? I heard that really helps” or “make sure you cut diet soda and don’t eat after 6:00pm!”. It’s well-intended. It doesn’t really bother you at first. It actually gives you things to search while you lay in bed with your phone at night.
But at week 5 it gets a little frustrating.
You miss eating out with all your friends and just going with the flow. The diet tonic and vodka with extra lemon you get at happy hour tastes like the Smirnoff you drank out of a water bottle in high school. You can’t notice a single pound off your waist and your weight is still fluctuating day-to-day. Something about water-weight.
It’s week 20, a full 5-months into your diet (lifestyle change) and you’ve finally lost 22 pounds. You notice, but it’s honestly hard to notice except for the people that see you everyday.
You’ve been cheating a little bit because you took a trip to Houston and you couldn’t help but to get the best Goddamn ribs you’ve ever laid your hands on. And then you went out three nights in a row and gained seven more pounds. You feel like throwing the scale out your second story bathroom window when you see the results and scream words you’d never say, even on the internet.
But you get back to the basics and continue strong. Little does everyone else know that losing pound 7 is laying the groundwork to losing pound 150.
It’s week 22. Someone asks you how you’re diet is doing.
You’re irritated. You think, “IF YOU HAVE TO ASK, HOW DO YOU THINK IT’S GOING?”.
The Weight Watchers ads that stalk you on the internet and the Diet Coke commercials that interrupt your running playlist on Spotify every 20 minutes are your daily reminders that it was supposed to be easy. Everyone still thinks it is. They still think of you as fat. They still think you know nothing about losing 150 pounds.
Why didn’t I drink enough Green Tea?
Should I switch to 8 meals a day?
Should I cook everything in coconut oil?
You’re irritated because apparently there are dozens of commonly known hacks that get everyone to their perfect weight. Yet, very few people have bodies that are ready for the ESPN Body Issue, you think. You know it takes time. You’re in it for the long-haul. You’re getting better at staying discipline and sticking to the things that matter. Most people are full of shit.
It’s week 46, and you’ve lost nearly 40 pounds. People start noticing. They say “Wow you look good!”. You smile. They still give you suggestions like the organic palm seed oil their cousin used to lose 50 pounds in 3 months.
THAT is sort of what it’s like starting a company.
Everyone keeps asking you “How Is Your Weight Loss (startup) Going?”. They give you suggestions despite knowing almost nothing about your situation, your market’s pains, and the constraints you’re under. Add some more mental stress to the mix.
They keep asking, expecting you to lose 150 pounds in 2 weeks. But you know that getting customer 5 and listening to the pains 120 people in your market this month is the groundwork to getting to user 100,000.
It happens inch by inch until someone notices that you’ve crawled your way through a 10k. Suddenly, you’re an overnight success.
Instead of asking early-stage startup founders “how is your startup doing?”, ask “what are you working on with (whatever their startup is) right now?” or even “how are you”.
The question isn’t inherently bad. Startup founders love to talk about what their working on. They light up. But it’s the implied expectation of overnight success that’s the problem with the question.
Please, ask about the process or the person, not the result.
Results matter. They do.
But I’m sure you can see why a different question might be fitting :).
If you enjoyed this essay, please recommend it so others can see it too :) 🌀 — Mitch
PS — You Might Also Enjoy These:
- Trying to Be Great At What You Do? (You Might Have This One Blindspot)
- Armchair Neuroscience: You & Nostalgia
- What Does It Really Mean To Wear The Captains Jersey?
- What I (Really) Wish I’d Known As A Freshman In College
- My Own Startup — Nametag :)
