0.5 Year Old Startup Co-founder Breakup
“Happy 28th Steve. The Journey is the Reward. – The Pirates” – as seen on a billboard near Apple HQ 1983
It’s certainly difficult to always have this mentality. To me the journey feels like an unpredictable roller coaster that you don’t want to be on. Sometimes the buildup before an exhilarating drop is in pitch darkness. I don’t know when, but I know a drop is coming.
In the past month, I finally had let go the person I co-founded this project with.
I still remember the day I picked up the phone to discuss my project idea with him. I was excited and bustling with energy. Through months of suffering depression, I came up with a solution that would provide people experiencing a hard time, some relief. I peppered him with questions concerning scope, development time, intricacies of the technology required, etc and he was happy to explain everything from his perspective to me. I remember him sighing and yawning a lot during our initial conversation, and I made a mental note of it. At the end of the conversation, I asked whether he wanted to be a part of this project and have a piece of it, and he gave me a confident affirmative. I quickly ignored the yawns. He must’ve just been exhausted.
I wish I could say, “and the rest was history. Look at where we are now. We’ve taken on a world challenge and helped solved one of the last standing stigmas, mental health. It was a tough journey, but the whole journey was beautiful and worth it. We stuck together and brought each other up when we were down, and through this process we’ve learned so much about ourselves and feel good about the small role we can play in creating value for humanity.”
This is all wishful thinking. In reality, I found myself at my co-founder’s apartment on the opposite coast a couple weeks after our fateful call having to wait for him to take video game breaks while I cranked away. I was all-in, and for the first time in my life, work didn’t feel like work and my passion for helping other’s allowed me to see the bigger picture and not focus on an apparent inequality.
“Video game break? That’s fine. If that is what he needs, this is a small concession. I’ll sell him the dream and he’ll be hooked just like I am. We’ll be the dream team and go where no one else has dared to go before.”
Fast forward another couple of months. Pep talks seem to be working. I even got him to articulate that he’d be willing to leave his day job to try and to build the startup in SV with me. We would drive Uber cars or become baristas to support ourselves. The rest of the time will all be about the startup.
Of course I’m igoring the fact that I’m working 4-5 times the hours he’s working on this startup, but it’s fine. His day job is demanding. I’ll carry the weight on my shoulders. After all, there’s an infinite amount of work to be done. If he could, he would right?
Concession after concession, I’ve learned to accept how he wants to move forward with this startup. Slow progress is better than no progress right? The dream became a side project for him. He even told me that it wouldn’t be worth gracing his resume, but it’s interesting enough for him as a learning process.
I still stuck with it – stubborn to see the bigger picture, and through this, the scrappy soul and ambition of a startup was lost. I got used to emails being ignored. Weeks would go by with no progress.
After a while, I couldn’t stand it anymore. Our user’s were being ignored, and I couldn’t make any progress unless he was more responsive and responsibile.
I finally let him go, but I feel far from free.
– Founding CEO of a fledgling company