So I was recently talking to my friend who has her PhD in Engineering as well as has worked at several startups as a CTO. She hit me with a big analogy that rang true.
Starting a company is a lot like doing a PhD you can sprint and try to be done in 3 years while being stressed and having no family or social life, or you can take 5 years and probably still get there while having a more balanced life. Really the only thing that changes how long you like to stay broke and in bad working conditions.
I was recently at a large startup competition and I always ask fellow entrepreneurs how many hours do you work and it ranges from 40-80+ I always felt like I was on the low end usually putting in an honest 20-30 with perhaps 10-20 of administrative tasks anyone could do like booking tickets. I was amazed and mortified of these guys I see who have way more roles and responsibilities than me. Especially those that had a bigger team size.
We were all in similar stages all in similar profits and revenue yet they were killing themselves and I feel the most fulfilled and happy overall I've ever been. I learned in my technical career there there is just a limit to how much you can do of technical work be it financial statements, SEO or marketing or engineering or software dev. Rather than try to load my schedule as much as possible I looked hard at automating the business and always finding people better to offload the tasks while I work one what I'm truly good at. I would rather focus and do 10 hours a week of amazing work, than 80 hours a week at 3 job functions I'm just descent at.
I chose to take 5 years to build a company instead of 3 but I think we found the opposite, by delighting just a few customers and putting out really technical and great work (that probably took us a few months longer) we deferred a lot of fluff work that didn't actually further the objectives. We are crazily enough ahead of schedule and budget even though we can only afford 1 full time engineer. Also since I'm usually rested and low stress I have a chance to prepare for "big client" meetings and knock them out of the park.
Another entrepreneur said it best: "would you want to train your whole life for the Olympics and then the day before your event run a marathon?" Many of us finally land big meetings iwth landmark customers, or investors or give talks. Why would I want to work 16 hours the day before I had a big client presentation instead of taking 4 hours to tweak the slides and practice and calling it a day to go rest wit the family?
I don't think I have a point or even a conclusion I just see a lot of people burning themselves out with work that doesn't actually further the business while I feel I'm doing more with less and still meeting the same metrics as our peers. My biggest advice to fellow entrepreneurs is to be honest about what you're actually good at and do it as much as possible and differ the other work to those who are better "but I can't afford to hire a full team" You're right neither can I, my chief job is making the people on my team and customers excited, I can't compete with google and amazon for salary, but I can offer exciting work or find junior engineers stuck in corporate environments who want to expand faster than they could and give them work opportunities that they otherwise would have to wait a decade to earn in a big corporate. Use your tools to your advantage they don't all have to be cash on hand.
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