We’ve all been there. How do you answer the question, “How’s it going?” “How are you doing?”
What does this question mean?
For one thing, life becomes so intertwined with the startup, that asking “How are you doing?” sounds equivalent to “How is your company going?”. But this isn’t what people generally mean by the question. I think what is generally meant is “Are you happy?”
If you’re like me, not only do you not know the answers to that question, you don’t want to. To put it as a friend once did, “I’m lazy evaluating that question.”
Professionally? Actually, my startup is going fine, speaking in my role as the CEO (and nearly sole employee). We’ve gotten some grants, making good progress, learning a lot. Always looking up, might have a small project coming in, might get a bigger grant in six months. People care about what we’re doing, albeit not enough to let me pay myself well.
But I finally got around yesterday to actually taking some time to really think about that question. “Am I happy?”
The answer seems to unambiguously be “No”, at least with regards to my work situation. I asked myself, “Hey, if I get this new grant, will it fill me with dread or excitement?” The answer was a strong and clear “Dread”.
Why? It’s $250k a year for three years! It’s a dream come true! It’s exactly what I’ve spent the last 2 YEARS working towards!
Why? Because a grant just means I have to keep doing the same kinds of things I’ve been doing.
- I still won’t have a team of smart people to work with. I’m lonely as hell doing the technical work all on my own. And it’s hard work! We’re not a software startup, I’m trying to develop unique new material technologies! Who, other than a God (or Russian Physicist), can handle all that.
- I think I actually hate doing research! I had never really noticed this before, undergraduate, grad school, postdoc, then jumping into this. I love thinking about projects, and I love science, but I hate the day-to-day life of a lone researcher. The most satisfying work I’ve ever done has been solidly engineering, design, systems engineering, and project management. Why on earth am I doing a project where my role is acting as a researcher (on top of running the company)? I’m a moron apparently.
- My actual work is the same as it ever was, going into the lab, doing days of work, spending days analyzing the results, and it just sucks. I want people working under me who can do things like check the fittings and run the reactor and do tests so that I can actually spend my time understanding the big picture and direct the course of the project. And find customers, write grants (I actually like writing them!), think about overall goals… and right now that’s all a full time job on top of my full time job. I want to do it, but I just can’t to either role well.
- I want to be able to say “try this” and then take the results and weave it into the big picture, spend my time designing the project instead of running experiments. If I had someone above me, it’d be fine, since they’d be spending time doing that part. So at least I could focus on the details instead of trying to do both. But doing *BOTH* is impossibly difficult. I can either direct the project, or do all the work, but not both. I’d rather direct the project, but can’t afford to hire people.
- $250k a year sounds like a lot, but with overhead and equipment costs, it really amounts to being able to finally pay myself a decent wage (which is stupendous) but only likely hire one other person. There’s no conceivable way that the situation will substantially improve with just two people. I need more like five people to do this right, and that’s a $500k budget a year minimum.
- That $250k a year for three years gives a skewed picture of where we are. That’s not commercial revenue. That’s not VC funding. That’s the bridge to *get* to VC funding or customers… that’s the support to let me get to the point where I have a proof of concept good enough to start pursuing commercial success. I don’t know if I can deal with this for another three years, with just one full time partner. The problem is too big.
So in any case, it’s taken me over a year to ask myself “Am I happy?” and actually take the time to answer. It was an incredibly painful day, to say the least. But I feel so free now that I’ve really dug deep and figured out what I want. I want to be on a team with awesome people. I want to make enough salary that my home life is not stressful. I want to be either managing projects and thinking strategically, or else solving very focused problems — not both.
I’m going to try to look at finding a more normal job, or else a job inside a startup that’s gotten enough funding to actually do the project remotely right.
Has anyone been down this road, transitioning from running a startup that despite some modest success just isn’t going where you personally want to be? Does the fact that I’ve got a PhD, and had some success, and got grants where I performed well, and have hired employees and managed the project and got customers… does that actually put me in a position to ask to be a senior employee somewhere? Obviously I’ve got the stamina for a really stressful job, since I’ve been successful at this by any objective metric.
My dream job, I think, would be as a VP or Director at a big enough company that I have the opportunity to hire and manage a strong team to do big things. I feel unqualified for that so far; how can I get there?