« If you could go back in Time, What Would you tell Yourself in your 20s?| Main | F# Versus Microsoft's Regex. A Lesson in Types »

The Biggest Obstacle

| | Comments (2)

I've spent the last ten years working on creating my own startup. I've read dozens of books, hung out with other people who wanted a startup online, joined clubs and associations, met with "experts" , etc. More to the point, I've actually built 5 startup ideas and tried them out.

I'm finally reaching the point where I'm starting to get traction -- I'm not Ramen-profitable, but some things are starting to "click" and I'm making enough money each month to cover server and domain expenses plus beer money. That's not Bill Gates-rich, but it sure beats a stick in the eye.

Now that I'm beginning to get traction, I'm also beginning to feel like I may never make it.

Why? Because there's a huge obstacle that I am not sure I can overcome on my own.

Is it programming ability? Nope, got tons of that, and I love to code. Is it "stick-to-it-ness"? Nope, I used to have that problem, but now I realize that a year or two minimum is required to begin to get an idea of potential. Is it business smarts? To some degree yes, but not enough to matter. I understand that there are ways to quickly test a market and that market research must come before development. Find your customers and live with them. How about time? Nope, I make enough when I consult that I have time to work on my startups. Motivation? Not really, as I love building things and learning, and there is nothing in the world like getting a check for some service or product you have provided.

It's life.

I find this hard to explain, but I'll give it a shot.

In your teens and 20s, it is not unusual for you to have a kind of empty feeling. You might wander "What is the meaning of life?" or "What do I want to be doing?" or "What is the right choice for me now?" Life can appear empty and foreboding. Although you have things that you love doing, and it's great hanging out with friends, there is this feeling that you should be needed somewhere, that you should be fitting into the grand scheme in a big way, and that somehow you are supposed to make these decisions about how to make all of that happen.

Smart people take those feelings and turn them into ambition -- they go to school, self-educate, join the military -- do all sorts of things to maximize where they fit into the grand scheme of things. Some people join up with various causes and groups -- nothing wrong with these groups, but for many they serve an unacknowledged psychological need to be a part of something. Some folks get married.

Some folks just learn how to be permanently apathetic, through drugs, video games, TV, sports, whatever, they have learned to kill this feeling of wanting to make a difference and fit in.

But they are the rare ones. Everybody learns to dull this feeling to various degrees through these things, but most folks find some pieces of life where they are needed and where they make a difference. Many people find dozens.

So the day comes in your 30s or 40s when you want to do a startup.

And you have programmed your entire life to resist this.

Let's say you decide to start on a Monday.

You wake up on Monday. Time to kick it off, right? Well no, it's time to hit the treadmill. Can't take a day off from the workout. After that can you start? Well no, then it's taking the kids to the doctor this morning. Remember you promised? How about when you get back? Well, only an hour or so there, and you haven't blogged in over a week. Remember the goal to blog once a week?

After lunch? Sure thing! You sit down at the computer -- only to realize that ten of your Facebook friends have various things to say that you should respond to. Then you drift off reading HackerNews for an hour (very easy to do) and suddenly it's supper time.

I could go on, and on, and on, and on. There is a significant element of technology evolving to take all of your attention, which I've written about before. But there's also the fact that as you get older, things get more complicated.

When you write a program for a system, many times the code is in it's best shape the minute you stop coding. It does exactly what you want, and it is easy to read. Over time, however, if you (and others) continue to maintain this code, it gets a lot of "cruft" -- stuff that works, patches that make sense, but might not fit into the larger picture. It just works -- it's not pretty. Over months and months of patching and kludging, the code gets so much cruft it's hard to tell what does what.

Life is like that too. Each time you pick up a habit or make a commitment, it seems like a very logical thing to do at the time. But over many years, the habits and commitments build up, and they don't always interact with each other in optimum ways. Remember that habit you had of going out with the guys drinking beer and watching sports games on Monday night? Well that doesn't fit into your new habit of needing to exercise on Tuesday morning.

At first these are simple conflicts -- do I keep my running habit even if I'm traveling on vacation? But later they all start stacking up. For instance right now it is 10am Sunday morning and I have at least 4 commitments I have made, 3 of which I am ignoring. Sunday mornings is my designated TV time -- I love watching the political shows. It is also my time for exercising -- nothing like a good workout while the family is gone to church. It's the time I should be coding on my startup. And I should be writing on my blog. Today the blog wins.

The obvious answer is to prioritize your startup above everything else -- just do it. But when there are real people involved, it's not so easy. Let's take decisions involving family as an example. My oldest son Bruce is still upset me with because I did not attend his sporting events when he was a kid. My wife was talking to me last week to make sure I don't make the same mistake with the two children still at home. Startups have a 1-in-10 or 20 chance of succeeding. It might take another ten years to become self-sufficient. Even though I know now that it is doable, in ten years all my kids will be out of the house. Do you provide for your retirement or make memories with the people you love?

The easy answer is "family comes first", and of course, it does. But I don't think family shouldn't be some kind of god in your life. People in a family love each other no matter what and are all supposed to be encouraging each other to grow and do their best in life. This pattern of parents becoming martyrs -- spending every waking moment obsessing over their children and taking them from one event to another -- doesn't seem very healthy, either for the kids or the parents. I honestly hope that some activity I was involved in as a child didn't prevent my parents from enjoying their retirement. To think otherwise would be the epitome of selfishness.

These commitments and habits are complex, and inter-related. While I can dynamically choose each day which to prioritize, I find that over time it leaves insufficient time for working on my startup. This would not have been true when I was 20.

So now I'm in a spot where my existence itself conspires against my larger goals. Everything that I am -- the choices I have made, the habits I have formed, the promises I have made, the people that I love -- pulls me away from trying to create something that people want. And why shouldn't it? A startup is all about trying to find something people want. A rich life is about already having found it.

No answers from me this Sunday morning, but I've checked off the "blog" item for today, now on to 4th of July celebrations. The code can wait, right?

It can always wait.

2 Comments

Great points all.

For me, I bridge part of this gap by making sure that when I work, I really work. For a lot of people, work-time isn't very intense. They check the blogs, they go get coffee, they shoot the shit with coworkers. I try to relegate all of that to non-work times, so that I leave at the end of the day really needing to stop working. Pair programming is my favorite way to make sure that happens, but failing that I'll use separate machines for development and non-development activities, and I sometimes use LeechBlock to help.

Another chunk comes through rigging the work in short, achievable chunks. Test-driven development where I can. Kanban-style planning with modest visible backlogs of items in the 2-8 hour range. Frequent releases for sure, hopefully with A/B testing and continuous deployment. Done right, you can get addicted to action, completion, and having an effect.

And personally, I need people to not disappoint. I have a business partner, and I can't wait to have a real user community. For me, being accountable to others turns it from an abstract problem that I can solve eventually to one that I should get hopping on.

Thanks William.

Lots of good advice in your comment! Food for thought.

Leave a comment

About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by DanielBMarkham published on July 4, 2010 2:36 PM.

If you could go back in Time, What Would you tell Yourself in your 20s? was the previous entry in this blog.

F# Versus Microsoft's Regex. A Lesson in Types is the next entry in this blog.

Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.

Social Widgets





Share Bookmark this on Delicious

Recent Comments

  • DanielBMarkham: Thanks William. Lots of good advice in your comment! Food read more
  • William: Great points all. For me, I bridge part of this read more

Information you might find handy
(other sites I have worked on)





Recently I created a list of books that hackers recommend to each other -- what are the books super hackers use to help guide them form their own startups and make millions? hn-books might be a site you'd like to check out.
On the low-end of the spectrum, I realized that a lot of people have problems logging into Facebook, of all things. So I created a micro-site to help folks learn how to log-in correctly, and to share various funny pictures and such that folks might like to share with their friends. It's called (appropriately enough) facebook login help