The Emotions of Startup Life
Being part of a young startup is probably one of the most daunting yet rewarding experiences. You get to pursue the dream of creating something people will love (hopefully), whilst also getting the opportunity to explore your inner makings. There’s a lot of talk about the benefits of doing something of your own, but often enough, it’s highlighted as to how hard real achievements are to come by.
Having often been somewhat of a person that balances the line between happiness and restlessness, the challenges that I’ve faced with this second attempt at entrepreneurship have not caught me off guard that much. Yes, money isn’t that easy to find. Yes, sticking to a strict product roadmap is virtually impossible. Yes, adapting to change on a weekly basis is necessary. All of the above, I was mostly prepared for, and there hasn’t been a moment of doubt or serious trouble at any stage. In fact, I have rarely been happier in life, despite having to face many obstacles, a lot of loneliness, much uncertainty and more.
Strangely, what has caught me off guard, to some extent, are the emotions that are associated with running a business and, perhaps more importantly, becoming part of a community that is filled with people with similar aspirations. Prior to setting up Portier Technologies, I would have described myself as a rather cold person with limited sympathy for deeply emotional behaviour. I don’t mean to say that I was the Ebenezer Scrooge type, but I almost feel as though I went through a similar transition in recent months.
In essence, I’ve been finding it harder and harder to explain to my community as to why I’d go out, risk the benefit of well-rewarded employment, spend countless hours on work and not even know if everything will eventually work out. All of this means that real empathy is a lot harder to find than the loneliness that comes with building a startup. That plays with one’s emotions!
The other aspect that adds further emotional elements to the above is the sheer amount of impressions you’re exposed to in this world. In my case, our startup has a global agenda, which sounds great, but actually means that much of our time is spent on flights to a mix of destinations. It then becomes very intense when you end up spending a week in more than three countries with three different cultures, smells, currencies, flavours or otherwise.
An example I often use to highlight this weirdness is my favourite barber shop which happens to be in Bangkok, a city don’t live in and never have. Whenever I’m in town, I walk in, wait and eventually get called over to the chair, all of which is very standard procedure. What makes this experience a bit strange is the fact that my barber no longer asks me what kind of haircut I’d like, as he actually knows, and he simply gets going with the cut. This might sound cool, but it’s actually strange to think that someone in a city I don’t live in doesn’t need to ask me about my preferences. That’s become a bit of a reality.
Despite some of these challenges, there is hope! It is intriguing to think that a group of people out there are likely to be going through the same or similar challenges, both emotionally and practically. Typically, you meet such groups during the course of a startup accelerator or similarly designed programmes. If it wasn’t for these, somewhat forcefully created (bad joke, I know!), environments, how else would you become part of a group for a more substantial period than, say a day or two at an event? It’s pretty hard!
Ultimately, it’s in these communities where you start finding real empathy and context, that is more relevant to you and a lot more tangible. In many ways, running a startup (despite having a co-founder) can often be like playing singles’ tennis; motivation has to come from within and there won’t be a teammate around you to push you at all times. In other words, each founder is busy focusing on targeted tasks, so you are often left to push yourself.
Thankfully, there is a large set of people out there, that are going through the same challenge, it’s just about finding and connecting with these people. In the same sense, it doesn’t even matter if you end up connecting with a competing startup, as the personal element of spending time or exchanging experiences is a true bonus to both.
Whilst it will be a challenge in itself to uncover these people in a more sustainable sense, in my case at least, the previously mentioned accelerator environment proved to be some great common ground. The most compelling part is the fact that in communities such as these, you get the opportunity to explore other human beings far beyond the limitations of small talk that might dominate the likes of industry events. Conversations are not isolated instances but they happen very frequently, and in some cases, friendships are formed.
The bottom line here is, that emotions are a natural by-product of setting up and running a startup. There’s nothing wrong with feeling overwhelmed from time to time, but I’d say it’s somewhat critical to genuinely dive into the “world of startups” by communicating and connecting with other founders that are going through similar challenges. Essentially, this community aspect is a compelling part of starting a business.
Portier is taking hotel technology to the next level. We graduated from Chinaccelerator, an SOSV accelerator that helps internet startups cross borders.
