“Meh, lots of lessons learned. Definitely lots of highs and lots of lows.” That’s usually what I tell people when they ask me how my startup, Enplug, is going. It’s not that it’s not true – it’s actually quite accurate – I just don’t want to bore them with the details.
I posted mid-way through 2010 how it was 6 months into my startup experience. Here’s a continuation of that post, now 1 year after incorporating.
1. Dude, this is hard
Well, at least it’s a good work out (Source)
It pains me to admit it, but despite the hubris, this is actually pretty hard. I’d rather be doing this than anything else, but I see the appeal of specialized, confined jobs. You have a few tasks and are expected to excel in that area. Dealing with dozens of different, concurrent issues as a founder is tough. Not so much in terms of time-consumption, but just mental overhead. It’s hard to keep track of everything, the subject matter isn’t always exciting (like legal, ugh.), and it’s really easy to find yourself asking, “how did I end up here of all places?”.
But you have to deal with it because if you don’t, no one else will. And that’s scary because you don’t always have the right answer. Why don’t you? Aren’t you an entrepreneur? These people are depending on you. How can you not have the right answer? Maybe you’re not cut out for this?
Once again, “how did I end up here?”.
But you do the best you can and you hope you’re doing it right. You try to win the small battles but you know the war is far from over. It’s a dreadful thought sometimes.
Oh well, whine over. There’s no time for that anymore.
2. Amazon Could Do It
You’ll find it in aisle 17,384 (Source Reddit)
I wrote the following to my team on our yammer a while back:
This is just one section of one of Amazon’s warehouses. THIS can easily be a logistical nightmare. In fact I’m pretty sure it is, but they have the right people, the right execution, and are one of my most admired companies in the world. Seriously, shipping essentially any item in the known world to any location within a week (2 days if in North America) is a modern day miracle.
As hard as it seems, Amazon was a startup at one point too
(in fact here’s their recruiting letter from 1994: http://www.geek.com/articles/chips/…). Its employees were and are no more superhero-like or motivated than us. If, over time, they were able to continue refining their strategy and execution to even accomplish a fraction of what we see above, then it’s easily possible for us as well.
It will take some time, and it will be uncomfortable and difficult, but maybe one day some fledgling startup’s yammer will be talking about Enplug’s hiring posts with similar reverence.
I have to say that we were a bit naive going into this, especially when dealing with hardware. It just adds so many layers of technical complexity to the process that I was envious of the traditional software startups.
“Man, I wish we could just code some web app, like an AirBnB for X, and call it a day”. However I like to think back to Amazon and realize that dealing with the crap no one else wants to deal with is part of our competitive edge. In fact, I think we’ve even figured out some really cool things with hardware that no one else is really considering in digital signage.
So while dealing with hardware definitely made it more difficult, but there’s also tremendous upside.
3. This is pretty fun
This gives me an idea for a new televised sport (Source)
Amid the chaos, this is actually kind of fun. You start to fling poo often enough to the point where you begin to enjoy it. You just get it. No one else does, and you don’t expect them to either.
So copywriting and marketing were the feces that stuck. I like writing – I’m terrible at it, but I enjoy it. I grew up as a deviant Asian, one that preferred to write than to do math. I do a lot of work as a founder but the crap that sticked happened to be the marketing aspect of it.
In poker I made a living by essentially convincing people to give me money. Like in anything, you can’t just ask for it though, you have to be clever. I found a similar calling in copywriting, and to my surprise, I actually enjoy studying it.
Like I said, you strive to win the small battles when you can.
Thanks for reading, Happy New Years!
