A thread on the early days of a Startup

Crossposting this short Twitter thread:

1/ That feeling in the air & your body just prior to releasing your startups first product to the 🌎 is 1 of the best you’ll ever feel professionally.

A unique (& kind of amazing) element for me was not needing to juggle the upcoming launch w/ existing production or user issues.

2/ The phase that follows/followed was pretty amazing too. For us, that meant a friends & fam period following internal employee testing. It takes effort to develop & manage a program such as this but it’s worth it because of how much you’ll catch & fix + for the ambassador aspect.

3/ By the way, rolling out a consumer lending product is tricky… so many variables.

Example: Apple denied our iOS app since we were essentially in beta (we couldn’t guarantee we’d always be accepting new applications). 🔧 thrown. Stressful but 👍 several ☎️ calls & a few description changes later.

4/ Opening up for GA (general availability) is exhilarating… I remember spending nights & weekends just staring at & monitoring various systems as people w/ no personal connection found & interacted with what we built… then more & more people. I lived in Amplitude Analytics, Sumo Logic and Google Analytics.

5/ Be careful and prepare your mind & body for this time period. Now and the foreseeable future will be the very opposite of the pre-release honeymoon… juggle-mania.

6/ We worked so hard & often, without anybody telling anyone they needed to. I’m reflecting on why (compared to most other working environments).

First reason coming to mind is ROE (Return on Energy). Is there ever a higher expected ROE for employees than during a startups 1st yr?

7/ 1 of the biggest realizations I came to immediately after we got going was how little glamour there is. It’s hard, hard work, and there’s no hiding.

The only glamorous time in startup life is prior to day 1 when the initial team is formed, $’s raised, and you quit your job.

I guess another would be following a nice liquidity event 🤷.

8/ I’ve helped some friends make career decisions. I always surprise them when I explain the lack of romanticism & glamour compared to their expectations based on the media. That belief is so 💪 that they have a hard time believing me (until they text me 3 months after joining).

9/ I don’t tweet this with the intention of saying anyone shouldn’t join a startup because of the lack of glamour. I’m strictly just trying to help with expectation setting & mental preparation. It’s important to make sure you’re making career decisions for the right reasons.

10/ By the way, if you need a guiding light for decisions, this one can help: