Making a start-up start-up is hard work!
If you believe the hype about start-ups that you see on television you would think that setting up a start-up is largely hanging out with your friends drinking beer, shooting Nerf guns and raising so much capital super quickly that you can afford to buy the latest model Tesla as it rolls off the production line. Sadly, this is not the case for most people (although I do have a great Nerf gun collection).
Setting up a start-up has its ups and down and some parts are more glamorous than others. Good, bad or ugly setting up a start-up is hard work.
This is not the first time that I've set up a start up. I loved setting up my previous start-up but to be perfectly honest I really hated running it. I found myself wanting to avoid sales, admin and any of the operations of the business. Ultimately I decided to go back to full-time work because I really found that I wasn't enjoying the job that I had created for myself.
Setting up a start up is hard work not because it's mundane or boring, or even because they require lots of intellectual thought. Starting up a start-up is hard because there are just so many things to do that require attention to detail and new ways of working. It's hard to sometimes feel that you are achieving when the mountain in front of you doesn't seem to get any smaller and there isn't a clear pathway or direction to achieving your goals.
Fast forward to the present time and I've learnt to be a bit more tolerant of the work that I don't particularly like doing, but I've also got learnt more about how to stay motivated to get this to work.
The 5 top things that I have learnt to help with the hard work of starting a start up are:
Use a project management tool like Basecamp or Jira - they are generally free for your first project or have trial plans.
If you can afford it invest in some decent agile project management training or do a free online course.
Figure out how much money you need to make to pay people to do the things that you really hate (I hate sales) and make that your short-term goal. The sooner you can stop doing the things you hate the more you'll love working on your start-up.
Find ways to motivate yourself and celebrate smaller achievements but that still support your start-up, like booking into a conference that you would not normally spend money on if you contact at least 5 new potential clients.
Don't sweat the small stuff and remember that decisions can always be remade. Don't try to aim for perfection, aim for getting it done. You can change it later when you've got time and energy (or even better a team that can do it for you!).
Setting up a start-up is hard work but it does pay off. The skills that you learn in setting up a start-up are incredibly valuable even if your start-up fails and you head back into paid employment. I look forward to the day when my start-up is successful enough that I might be able to even contemplate buying a Tesla car, but until then I'm loving starting-up my start-up (even if it is hard work)!
