The Many Series of My Failures
I decided to document a series of failures that (I, as a founder, aka) EATLAB has gone through or is going through so that I can remember how I overcame each one of them, what I learned from the experience and how I grit my teeth and bear it. Going through a tough time and talking about it are much much more difficult than doing so after having risen above difficulties.
There are way too many conversations that glorify success. But in those conversations contain no specific process that can guide others who are struggling to bear the weight of pressure and overcome challenges with grace. So here is my attempt.
EP1 : Hiring
The first episode started when someone who is super fast like myself became passionate about starting a company, rallying as many people as I can to help me get off the ground. The fault didn’t lie in the fact that I swiftly took actions, but more in that I should have realized the opportunity cost of having recruited the wrong kind of people into the company at that point in time. In different stages of the company, you need different kinds of people. When you begin a completely new idea, not knowing what the end game looks like, you probably want to find someone who can live on a small budget with you, who is willing to sleep a few hours and then wake up to do the work you just argued about last night all over again, or even start the entire thing from scratch, just because they cannot not do it. However, I ended up hiring executives whose prior experience was in a large corporation. While these execs were not familiar with the fail fast and fail forward type of approach due to their familiar nature of work, each iteration took a long time to adjust (I mean, at least 6 months!) In startups, you would want to make mistake on a daily basis so you can learn quicker! At such early stage, information in the company should be even more than transparent. But I kept many parts of the information to the management team. This creates a divisive culture, which can be very toxic in early stage companies, where you want everyone to feel like they are a family member, we can share all our pains and struggles. In order to get to a product market fit stage, constant flow of information and a sense of accountability and ownership should be a strong part of the culture. To expect them to be able to run a startup company is not that different from expecting a truck to zigzag around a busy walking street like a motorcycle can.
Now since your startup is probably are being funded by Ramen Capital (i.e. no capital, free ramen), the best way is to find someone who are willing to work with you for free, who love what they do just as much, or love the customers just as much. That’s why a lot of founders in great companies started from solving their own problems and became big. There will be many many times when things are so hard and you want to give up. This friend, i.e. co-founder, of yours will be that extra push to get you through the valley of death, with GRACE! I am very lucky to have my husband as my co-founder!!