We founders are fools!

From my 2 years of journey, things I wish I had known before being a founder.

Do you also find the title funny? Well, this is how I feel every day 😁

So, I am a developer turned founder. Like other tech founders, I also did everything that a normal founder is expected to do — Read Paul Graham’s essays, followed YC’s YouTube channel, watched most of the episodes of Lenny’s podcast, and read a bunch of startup books, so yes, a basic self-proclaimed masters of startups.

While reading/watching/listening, I also felt the same way as you (assuming). This startup stuff is easy, all you need to do is talk to your users, build a good tech team, find distribution and you are a 🦄!

This is how even I started! And honestly, the last 2 years have been one of the best days of my life, I have never enjoyed the process this much before. But while going through it, I had a very interesting observation, that stands true 99% of the time —

We founders are fools!

How?

Once you are a founder, you will see a slight change in the people’s behavior around you. Your family might feel you are stupid for leaving your comfortable life, your friends and colleagues might think you should not have done this and you might regret it later. So mostly everybody around you will think they know things better than you do!

People will consume content about how startups are built through books, podcasts, and videos and everyone will think they can do this better than you!

You will get a random piece of advice every now and then! Everyone may also think, that doing this is so simple. That might be even true. They might have done things better or differently if they had done it. But the point is, it’s you who is doing it!

If execution matched theory, we'd all have rockets heading toward Mars right now! But, no, we don't!

So one of the things that I learned being a founder and I wish I had known this earlier, is that people will come and give their unsolicited advice! Most of the time, they want to genuinely help you. But, don’t forget, you will have much more context than anyone else. This advice floating around may make you doubt yourself and your decisions but don’t lose confidence in yourself.

Early in your startup journey, you doubt yourself. You have never done this before and all you want is a sense of assurance. You get excited when an associate sends you a meeting invite and you think you will get an investment. When someone likes your idea, you think you have a customer. And that is why you start taking every piece of advice seriously.

But sometimes, all you need to hear is, “Hey, you doing good, just keep at it!” And today, I just want to tell you this.

In the last two years, I have gotten all sorts of advice, good, bad, wanted, unwanted, everything 😄. Advice from people who are investors (not in our company), advice from people who are just thinking of starting up, advice from people who just started reading books on startups or listened to a podcast, advice from people who built and sold their companies, and advice from almost everyone you can ever imagine!

Some might make you feel like a fool and some might be extremely helpful. But all of that with a pinch of salt, exactly like this one 😉

Why?

Because founders are fools, you know! They will listen to anything and everything :)