This is something I'm pondering a lot these days. I am the co-founder of a startup that I'm in the process of winding down. We had some success but ultimately never gained sustainable market traction in a very hard to penetrate market.
Having bootstrapped the company to revenue and kept things very lean and with costs and employee salaries funded initially through personal savings and a little bit of debt, I didn't take a dime of salary for myself in over 3 years.
I always told myself the experience would be incredibly valuable regardless of what ultimately happened, knowing the chances of success were slim but opting to go for it anyway, because how else was real change effected? Yes, I've definitely learned a lot, would do things very differently a second time round and have gotten some experiences (good and bad) that I wouldn't otherwise have had, but I'm finding it hard to see much upside in the past 3 years right now. I see my colleagues doing well in their careers and seemingly every other startup founder I've met, crushing it, although I have also seen a few failures over time.
I've tried to sell what's left of the company but have had little interest. I've applied to jobs in the Bay Area but it's clear hiring managers don't know quite what box to put me in and would rather go with the brand name and "safer" candidates. Yes I'm being a little selective in where I want to work, but it's hard not to stick to your ideals after standing by them for the past 3 years.
Hopefully it'll all be part of a glorious master plan that becomes apparent in decades to come but at this point who knows! It's definitely given me a better appreciation for the risks that entrepreneurs (including early employees) take and a greater respect for those who do go out and grow something that truly makes the world a better place.
Somewhat unrelated but anyone know what Stripe used to create that video run through - it looks really slick and would love to discover some tools to make recording and annotating these kind of videos easy.
I'm a long time Spotify fan using it on everything from my Mac to our Shield TV and Echo. Music is a staple of my life and I regularly spend my working day listening to Spotify.
Call me an optimist but I see a huge opportunity to capture additional $'s from less price as sensitive people like me. I'd happily hand over more money to the artists I actually like and listen to regularly but no platform gives me the means to do that (ala twitch cheer). They should start building premium features that connect subscribers more intimately with artists through gigs, merchandise or content. I see a lot of headroom in the price - $14.99/mo for 6 accounts (family plan) IMHO is very cheap.
Great advice. I was wondering if anyone out there has experience of sourcing technical leads when what's primarily on offer is equity for a founding/lead role at a bootstrapped startup with an early product. Clearly you need to have a compelling vision, show potential and find people in the right frame of mind/stage in their career but I'm wondering if I'm missing any important channels? So far here are a few I've tried and my experience:
* AngelList - seem to mainly attract recent bootcamp grads
* Meetups and Networking Events - seems very inefficient and so far I've come across very few technical folks at these events, at least in digital health
* A lot of personal outreach using LinkedIn/email - probably the most successful so far..
* HN Who's Hiring - surprisingly few leads, but very high quality ones so far.
* Personal network - although similar to the author's I'm relatively new to the Bay Area
Having bootstrapped the company to revenue and kept things very lean and with costs and employee salaries funded initially through personal savings and a little bit of debt, I didn't take a dime of salary for myself in over 3 years.
I always told myself the experience would be incredibly valuable regardless of what ultimately happened, knowing the chances of success were slim but opting to go for it anyway, because how else was real change effected? Yes, I've definitely learned a lot, would do things very differently a second time round and have gotten some experiences (good and bad) that I wouldn't otherwise have had, but I'm finding it hard to see much upside in the past 3 years right now. I see my colleagues doing well in their careers and seemingly every other startup founder I've met, crushing it, although I have also seen a few failures over time.
I've tried to sell what's left of the company but have had little interest. I've applied to jobs in the Bay Area but it's clear hiring managers don't know quite what box to put me in and would rather go with the brand name and "safer" candidates. Yes I'm being a little selective in where I want to work, but it's hard not to stick to your ideals after standing by them for the past 3 years.
Hopefully it'll all be part of a glorious master plan that becomes apparent in decades to come but at this point who knows! It's definitely given me a better appreciation for the risks that entrepreneurs (including early employees) take and a greater respect for those who do go out and grow something that truly makes the world a better place.