[HN Gopher] How I feel quitting my own startup
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How I feel quitting my own startup
Author : aqui_c
Score : 108 points
Date : 2023-06-18 17:55 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.aquiles.me)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.aquiles.me)
| AHOHA wrote:
| Although it wasn't as a founder, but I can relate, in one of a
| small startup I got hired as the first engineer, rest were a
| founder and sales guy and a part time HR girl, so as expected, I
| solely built the architecture, few fully fledged platforms,
| dozens of PoC, successfully delivered projects, then after 1.5y
| the second engineer got hired, now I'm guilty as probably you
| mentioned being emotionally attached to my work, after all, I
| really was invested in it, I even designed the icons for these
| platforms and the proper catchy names in addition to the
| software/hardware engineering design, to writing the docs and
| even pitching the work for technical clients since sales guy had
| no idea what the work was beyond the concept.
|
| After a while, same thing started to happen, promises were made
| these platforms can deliver even though technically is impossible
| (so you can guess later when the client know these promises were
| BS), not getting invited to critical meetings, sales team (grew
| later than one guy) is gatekeeping the communication and only
| dripping to engineers the client requirements after they add
| their own unrealistic expectations, started to exclude me for
| training clients on how to use these platforms as only sales team
| are doing those (funny as most of the time, the first question
| they get asked and they are stuck, and ended up they calling me
| during the session remotely), and after long discussions that it
| isn't possible to be carried by sales and need a technical team,
| they quickly hired a co-op to act as one during these sessions...
| among other issues, I call these situations are simply sabotaging
| the company/startup based primarily on greed, in this case it was
| by the sales and CEO followed later.
|
| Now I had my lessons learned in that experience, but I'm sure
| your situation is worse being the founder, but I felt a good
| peace of mind after leaving them so hopefully you did the good
| thing.
| two_in_one wrote:
| As long as you have significant stock it probably doesn't
| matter much. Like for that engineer with 10% of Yahoo, or chief
| cook at Google. If you are ambitious, then you need an
| assistant to do what you are doing now. Better a small team
| under your leadership ;) The difficult part is to make them
| believe it.
| robocat wrote:
| > As long as you have significant stock
|
| Minority shareholding is actually pretty shitty, as I am sure
| a few people on this thread would agree.
| two_in_one wrote:
| Most of my savings came from minority stock. It was a nice
| surprise when I finally moved out. Could be better if I
| didn't sell it right away, but you never know...
| mfjordvald wrote:
| Side note, but the small font size + light grey text on the white
| background made it a bit of an eye strain for me to read your
| story, would definitely benefit a bit from some more contrast.
| sim7c00 wrote:
| even thoug i dont know u. for me i relate in this way. i love to
| start things, motivate others, and dream big. however, at some
| point though it makes me sad, i feel like the idea is better off
| in other peoples hands. i struggle to focus and .... just want to
| start new things and motivate new ppl. i dont do startups for
| this reason but actually you writing this blogpost makes me feel
| maybe there is a place for me. to get the ball rolling and then
| leave it to people who are good at being consistent and seeing
| things through, but maybe less at starting and gathering
| motivation in the early stages. everyone has their own strengths
| and pitfalls. each end is a new beginning and i am sure after
| this tough breakup u will have learned a lot and find a new
| wonderful thing in ur life! =) all the best!
| totallywrong wrote:
| No costumers, no product, and somehow he's leaving a team behind?
| How does that work?
| glitchc wrote:
| Hi OP, it's a truly sad event when people conspire against you.
| Have you received legal advice? Even though you are not working
| for the company anymore, you still have rights as a shareholder.
| A lawyer can help articulate and fight for those rights.
| aqui_c wrote:
| I left the startup I co-founded 4+ years ago. The entire process
| was an emotional roller-coaster.
|
| My co-founders (and business partners), who are the majority
| shareholder, made it abundantly clear that the company was
| 'theirs'. They made decisions behind my back although I am the
| only founder working full time on the company. I felt alienated,
| undervalued, and frankly quite miserable for a while.
|
| At some point, when this behavioral pattern started affecting
| other team members and I realized I had nothing left to do, it
| was time for me to move on.
|
| I tried to write down how I felt, keeping it politically correct.
| neilv wrote:
| Based on this description, I had to double-check that you
| weren't a particular founder I know.
|
| FWIW, it's not just you; these seem to be non-rare things to
| happen.
|
| One can _guess_ at the likelihood that egos, differing
| understandings /philosophies, or just plain greed are likely to
| become a showstopper problem.
|
| But, unless it's obvious that the showstopper problems are
| likely (some people telegraph warning signs heavily), if one is
| ever going to do anything, one has to guess and sometimes take
| a leap of faith.
| aqui_c wrote:
| Indeed, I've found some others in similar situations.
| Definitely a learning experience on which to build.
| ilamont wrote:
| Cofounder conflict is one of the biggest untold stories of
| the startup world. Happens all the time, but no one wants to
| admit the scale of the problem or get into their own
| specifics.
| treprinum wrote:
| By leaving you gave your co-founders what they wanted and they
| probably celebrated that their nasty behavior led to the
| expected outcome. Sometimes it's worth fighting and not
| avoiding conflicts.
| whack wrote:
| Sorry to hear that. How did you end up in a situation where
| you're the only founder working full-time but the other
| founders have more equity and control over the business?
| JimtheCoder wrote:
| It is probably no consolation for you, but now your former co
| founders have "their" own company that's four years old, still
| has no customers or an MVP, and apparently no one really
| working full time on the company...
|
| Seems like they get what they deserve...
| aqui_c wrote:
| Well, there's one product, one MVP, and a team of 8 full-
| timers... My biggest concern was the people, trying to find a
| situation that somewhat guarantees their short-term future
| and they can then go from there..
| glitchc wrote:
| Honestly not your problem at this point.
| JonChesterfield wrote:
| If the full time people don't identify a founder leaving as
| an existential threat and look for their way out that's on
| them.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Also it is a job. People can get fired (impacted I mean)
| at any company. They weight it all up like any other job.
| Company is family never really existed.
| opmelogy wrote:
| That really sucks. I'm sorry to hear it.
|
| I tried twice to start software companies with people I knew.
| Both times the other party didn't invest nearly as much time as
| I was putting in. And in both cases I figured this out fairly
| early and started to match their drive and investment into what
| we were building. As you'd expect, the companies folded within
| a few months.
|
| What's interesting to me is that one of the guys I'm still
| friends with and the story he tells for why it folded is very
| different from my view. To him, it was me backing away and
| causing it fail and from my experience, it was I switched from
| working on it 7 days a week to working on it two weekends a
| month. I don't think he's being mean spirited here - I think he
| is just that clueless about what was going on.
|
| My current start-up was founded differently. My partner and I
| did multiple smaller projects together to see if we could work
| together. We also went through a deep dive on "past traumas"
| (key life defining moments for us) along with exercises on what
| sorts of values we want to inject into the company (ranging
| from how we handle feedback, to how we respond to failure, to
| what our employees would say about us and the company 2 years
| in the future, etc.). This allowed us to understand where we
| are coming from, figure out if our values aligned, and help
| lean on each other when things got hard/stressful. It really
| does make navigating building something together. Basically
| "wtf?!" reactions can easily be replaced with "uh oh, is
| everything okay?"
| taneq wrote:
| It sounds to me like the two perceptions of your previous
| startup are pretty well aligned. You felt your partner was
| coasting so you checked out. They felt that you checked out.
| Maybe they were doing more than you realised, or maybe they
| were just freeloading.
| David_SQOX wrote:
| Life is too short to stay miserable, OP. You launched a startup
| that has lasted 4+ years, that in and of itself is a huge
| accomplishment. I've had several startups fail over 20 years
| and each was a it's own heavy learning experience.
|
| You've gotten much further than most ever will. Good work aqui!
| aqui_c wrote:
| Thanks! I try to stay as positive as possible, and looking
| forward to the new opportunities that'll appear.
| j45 wrote:
| There is always what's next for people who don't finish
| learning and experimenting .. and consequently peaking.
|
| Keep moving, Inward onward and upward
| psyklic wrote:
| FWIW something similar happened to me as well, dropped out of
| school to go full-time as a co-founder. We put in writing
| several times that we held similar numbers of shares, yet nine
| months in discovered my business partner awarded himself nearly
| all of the equity. When I left due to this, the company
| completely lost velocity for over a year, which I suspect might
| happen due to your departure too.
|
| The betrayal weighed on me for years, especially since I
| eventually had to involve lawyers. I think the most important
| thing you can do is find new opportunities to occupy your mind
| so you can learn from it but not dwell on it.
| taberiand wrote:
| Sounds like something that should have involved lawyers right
| from the "put in writing" stage.
| psyklic wrote:
| We had well-known lawyers from the beginning who deferred
| payment until we raised. The problem was that we delegated
| all legal to my business partner. When we traded the
| written equity split, he didn't disclose that he held
| (estimated) >80x more shares than what was listed next to
| his name.
| DelightOne wrote:
| How can that happen and how do you avoid that happen
| without ones' own knowledge?
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Amazing people think that'll work. Might be OK if the
| person doing that is the majority of the drive behind the
| business. But if not of course it will collapse.
| aledalgrande wrote:
| How can people be so sketchy and still sleep at night is
| out of my mind
| calmlynarczyk wrote:
| Psychopathy is a hell of a drug
| princevegeta89 wrote:
| Sorry to hear. Reminds me of the "cofounder" that I had who
| wanted a sizeable equity but ended up bringing nothing
| technical or managerial to the table. The startup failed after
| 1 year, and we just wrapped everything up. I was secretly glad
| it failed.
|
| It also reminds me to only work on startups with someone who
| you really know and trust, like a best friend.
| barelyauser wrote:
| Great way to ruin a great friendship.
| princevegeta89 wrote:
| I don't necessarily agree with this statement - if I know
| my best friend inside out we will have a super large room
| for flexibility, and that often prevents conflicts.
| rsaxvc wrote:
| This echos some of my feelings planning to move on after 14 years
| at the same(non-startup) place. Thank you for writing it.
| throwaway778 wrote:
| I'm struggling with making this decision at the moment and it was
| interesting to read this.
|
| I'm not a founder, but I'm the first hire and the first engineer
| - there since day 2. Six years in, a couple of pivots, and now we
| have a team of 100 people with a gigantic series A just closed
| and an excellent PMF. I built most of the product myself - it's
| genuinely game-changing and commercial demand is through the
| roof. Enough equity that if we were acquired now I'd be set for
| life.
|
| But I just don't know if I can hack it anymore. The commercial
| and product teams are pushing wildly unrealistic timelines for
| new features, which then the technical teams end up the bad guys
| for not being able to deliver on. Internal communication is all
| over the place, with nobody seemingly aware of deadlines and
| deliverables. The CEO is pretty visibly complaining about some
| teams not working hard enough, because he doesn't see them in the
| office or working evenings and weekends. Meanwhile I'm on 18 hour
| days, under pressure to squeeze performance out of a team that I
| already think is delivering good quality at a pretty rapid pace,
| and being badgered constantly to provide KPIs and metrics for
| them so that the C-suite can deicide if they're pulling their
| weight.
|
| It's almost exactly the opposite of the culture I'd want to
| create in an engineering team. Instead of teamwork and
| transparency aimed at producing a cohesive vision, everyone's
| pulling in a different direction. Everyone is overworked and
| making mistakes, and instead of trying to build systems and
| processes to avoid these issues, it's become a blame game. The
| answer to any problem always seems to be "work harder", rather
| than providing the resources and support that teams require.
| Features are being rolled out to customers against engineering
| advice before they're finished, meaning a massive drag factor as
| we scramble to patch them - and engineering leadership
| desperately trying to protect the rest of the team from having to
| pay for these decisions. And there's this message being
| communicated from the top that suggests technical teams aren't
| working hard enough that just feels utterly toxic. I'm probably
| making it sound worse than it is, but for certain the last six
| months have stopped being "I'm excited about working on this".
|
| How do you make the decision that it's time to call it a day? Is
| it practically possible to shift the culture? Or is it feasible
| to detach yourself a little bit from it - concentrate on the
| areas you can change, and stop caring about those you can't? I'm
| a well-paid engineer in an interesting field, and I'm invested
| financially and emotionally. It's hard to be objective about
| whether it's time to quit.
|
| Basically I can sympathise with the emotions you're going though
| and thanks for writing about it. Hang in there!
| te_chris wrote:
| Ask yourself if you're really that essential to things going
| forward? If not, then feel proud of what you've done and do
| what you need to do.
|
| And I mean really ask yourself. As you say, teams are scaled
| now, individual effort has less of a multiplier. In most cases,
| they'll probably be fine without you. That should feel
| liberating.
| subarctic wrote:
| I kind of hope you hold onto this throwaway account so you can
| tell us what you ultimately decide to do - from what you've
| said it sounds like the right course of action for you is to
| exercise your options to lock in your equity (assuming you have
| enough spare cash to do so) and move on, starting things off
| with a long vacation because you've been working crazy hours.
| Or you could start by just taking a long vacation and deciding
| what you want to do. Or a short vacation to work up to the long
| vacation - at the very least, a disconnect from the grind would
| probably really help.
|
| I say this as an individual contributor though, and I imagine
| it must be tougher to consider walking away when you're a
| manager and you have a team of people who will be directly
| affected if you leave.
| mkl wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=throwaway778:
| user: throwaway778 created: December 31, 2013
| ghiculescu wrote:
| > Is it practically possible to shift the culture?
|
| Yes. But it requires saying no to lots of things you used to
| say yes to (and vice versa), which can be extraordinarily
| difficult
|
| It may not feel like it, but if you have been around since day
| 2 you'll be respected enough to try anything you like, as long
| as you actually do it and don't complain (not saying you're a
| whiner but some people are). You basically have tenure.
| inconceivable wrote:
| the sense of frantic feature building is normal for a high
| growth startup. feeling constantly behind is also normal. a
| high growth startup is not a loving, nurturing, comfortable
| place. it's a mad dash for money and everyone is going to be
| pushing as hard as they humanly can, both in terms of work but
| also in terms of pushing others.
|
| you're on the right track with the detaching yourself, but that
| can only get you so far. at the end of the day you still need
| to deliver things that sell. having people who don't know what
| the fuck they're talking about demand all sorts of wild shit
| from you is normal.
|
| in the end, it's just difficult. you're being compensated with
| money and equity - if those aren't up to snuff, negotiate for
| more. if that doesn't work, you need to make the decision to
| stay or leave. there's a chance they give you what you want
| when you threaten to leave - and then you will have some
| leverage. but just realize this is not ever going to be a walk
| in the park. millions of dollars are on the line, people are
| not going to behave rationally because they see you as the
| limiting factor between them and their riches.
| neon_electro wrote:
| this is not the culture human beings should support or
| tolerate at their workplace
| convolvatron wrote:
| its not even a good way to maximize output
| inconceivable wrote:
| my comment is descriptive, not prescriptive. i doubt anyone
| even knows the difference anymore because of all the smarmy
| posturing these days.
|
| "this rock is hard, and has sharp edges. it will cut you."
|
| "no! that is terrible! rocks should be soft, with round
| edges! how dare you! nobody should accept rocks that are
| hard and sharp! that's dangerous! why do you support
| dangerous things?!"
| [deleted]
| ganbatekudasai wrote:
| No it's not, it's a false equivalence. What the original
| commenter described has way more pathologies than
| "startups are hard", and it does not smell like success
| to me. To pick up on your analogy, it's more like a rock
| that has been drenched in poop by someone, and you're
| supposed to use it to cut your food. There are other
| sharp rocks around, and most of them are not covered by
| poop, so you might be able to cut your food with it
| _without_ getting a terrible disease and puke all food
| out again in the process.
| inconceivable wrote:
| okay, so your position is that he should leave because
| everyone is too mean. that's valid.
| ganbatekudasai wrote:
| Don't put words in my mouth. OP mentioned significant
| equity and the possibility to be acquired, without any
| details. This could both provide them with something to
| show after enduring all the suck, as well as with a real
| chance of changing management. If the question was to
| join the company, or no equity was at play (including if
| there's either no realistic chance of that equity being
| worth something, or if the equity does not lose its value
| for OP after quitting anyway), then yes, likely best to
| leave immediately.
|
| Simplistic phrases are not going to help in complex
| situations with lots of details.
|
| > because everyone is too mean.
|
| No, because it sounds like a business bordering on
| dysfunction. You should know the difference.
| [deleted]
| benjimouse wrote:
| I went thru this seven years ago, leaving my startup which I'd
| been with for about 15. I still considered it a startup after all
| that time. The opportunity had long since been missed and all
| that remained was a long slow grind down to nothing. Which is
| exactly what has happened as it continued after my departure.
|
| For me it was as close as I could imagine giving up a child would
| be like, but in hindsight it was the best choice and I grew
| hugely as a result.
| ArcMex wrote:
| This saddened me. Best of luck, truly.
| acalzycalzy wrote:
| A finishdown, if you will.
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