Bootstrapping a software based startup and overwhelmed
I'm building what is essentially an 🔌API-first debt collection CRM/inventory management platform.
I'm almost ⌚1500 hours into coding this platform and I spend last week networking, partnering, planning, etc. Most of the non-code things that go with a startup. I'm building it with the MEVN with 🐬MySQL and 🔥Firebase.
I've had some great bursts of productivity but I can feel myself 🐢slowing down and I think that the stress of the meetings last week just amplified the stress. I'm starting to feel like my codebase is getting a bit verbose🍝. I'm having trouble deciding which feature to add next and I'm disappointed in myself for feeling unmotivated right now.
I've also been coding 12 hours a day, about 7 days a week for months📅. It's been pretty much all I've been doing.
I just want to know if anyone else can relate to this feeling. Any interesting anecdotes to share?
In a big picture sense, I feel great about the progress I've made. I think I'm scared that I may not hit that same stride I was hitting between 700-1400 hours.
How do you keep yourselves motivated? Should I be looking for team members? Hire my first developer? It feels a bit early for that. I'm still not sure it's commercially viable just yet. I want an MVP before I hire anyone.
How do you all cope with this type of stress or burnout?
If you're not sure the business is commercially viable yet then you need to stop developing right now and start understanding if it's a real business or not.
The sense of being overwhelmed comes from not having a good plan and goals in place. I know this because I've been there plenty of times before.
If I were you, right now I'd put up a simple landing page describing the benefits that your product offers and perhaps a signup email form. Stick a FB pixel on there and analytics, then spend maybe $20-$30 or so on facebook ad's targeted directly at your ideal customer. Use one of the many free tools (like snappa.com) to knock up some ad creative and test a few headlines and get those ad's running.
In a couple of days you'll get a great idea of if people are even interested in your idea or not. No point coding 12 hours a day for the next few months for something no-one wants or cares about.
As a coder myself, I know that we often mistake coding as being the main thing that progresses the business. Unfortunately, it's a tiny part of what makes a real business.
But before all that, I urge you to prove if your idea has business potential. Don't just assume it will be, test those assumptions with real data.
Oh, and take a day off every now and then, coding 12hrs a day is bad for you :)
+1 to this. Validate the business before you spend any more time coding.
This is so important!
After you've validated the business idea, spend some dedicated time on marketing to build an audience and demand before your launch. Mixing non-development work may be helpful, as long as you manage the context switching. It sounds like you want to make this a viable business (like any good indie hacker does!) and the non-code parts of the puzzle are just as important. Maybe you can use them as a tool to balance your burnout?
Thank you for the feedback. I was trying to not get too deep into the business aspect of it because I wanted to focus this post on the 'burnout' part. I'm actually realizing that I should have provided better context. I know the industry extremely well. I am building the software I had always wished existed when I owned my agency. I've begun doing the 'BizDev' stuff and I feel like that's when I started getting burned out. My competitors are being nasty with me and people want me to fail. Even if I do fail, it's still a huge success becuase I will have proven to myself that I'm capable of building it. I've gotten job offers from other companies who want me to build it for them.
What's stressing me out is getting the MVP out. It's a very data-heavy app with a lot of security considerations and everybody is rushing me to push out an MVP. That goal (get the MVP released by the end of June) is what's stressing me out. Maybe I need to push it back 2 weeks and not worry that missing my original deadline is a huge problem. I feel like missing my deadline is giving satisfaction to people who want me to fail, or to work for them.
This is different for different people. But I draw motivation from knowing that people are using and finding value in what I am making. So the earlier you can convince yourself of that, the better.
I empathize with you. That's a lot of coding. About 4 to 5 months of coding.
I feel you are protecting your product from facing the world and getting user feedback. Put out an MVP with bare minimum features to test your hypotheses. An MVP will give you something to talk about and showcase when networking. Even if the MVP gets a few interested users that will motivate you to decide the next set of features and code further.
You will do well. All the best.
Bob, if you're certain that there's a market for your software, and you already know where & how you'll get your first customers, that's a great place to be at.
That said, 1500 hours to build an MVP seems way overkill.
Generally speaking, there should be a way to get out something functional more quickly than investing 72% of work-year
I've been designing (not coding) software for a very long time, and one thing I've learned is that it's best to start off with something very bare bones. Make sure it does that very well, and then move on to the next feature, but do it in small, easily attainable chunks.
Regarding some techniques to keep you motivated:
Find people who need your software, would be willing to sign an NDA, and ask them to do some interval testing. Or get on a Zoom with them every 3 weeks, show them what you've accomplished, and get their feedback.
Force yourself to break-up your days and change your environment. Work at a different location a couple times a week, or anything like that.
Download some of your favorite content, and force yourself to take at least a 1 hour walk every day. It's really helpful in being able to clear your mind some.
See if you can find someone who doesn't know your market, but who understands products/business. Demo what you have, and explain what you're trying to accomplish. Sometimes a completely unbiased and fresh perspective can provide a lot of insight.
Good luck & hope the above info helps.
Pace yourself. It's a marathon, not a sprint.
Force yourself to take at least one day a week off (e.g., I don't do work on Sundays). I also limit my daily work hours, because I've realized that I'm pretty unproductive if I try to keep pushing it. There's no way you can be productive 12 hours a day, and getting enough sleep every night will boost your productivity.
I think you're absolutely right. What happens is that I spend a full day fixing bugs and then I feel obligated to work through the weekend because I don't feel like I made enough progress. But I need to really limit myself to reasonable hours.
I know that feeling that you need to keep going over the weekend, because progress was too slow. I tried to "go for it" early on, which was very draining. Being worried about running out of money didn't help. I eventually realized that my time estimates were way off (as they always are), and that I simply wouldn't be able to keep going the way I was.
You may also want to take a look at Kanban and SCRUM, as methods to plan and track progress. You can use them without a team, and they visually show you the progress you're making. SCRUM also has the concept of periodically reviewing how you're working (what went well, what went wrong), and then thinking about how you can work better. That's something worth doing with or without SCRUM.
Hey Bob! It seems to me that you know the in and outs of your target industry and the features they would look for in an MVP. You know for sure that the market exists and what it needs. You missed these features when you owned your own agency.
Now you want your new debt collection CRM/inventory management platform to be packed with those features. You want to hit them with this feature-packed, hammer-of-Thor version of a product so that they are absolutely floored and annihilated.
"coming soons" are not an option for you.
And you are passionate about this dream of yours; about what you're building. You've given 1.5K hours of coding into this platform and you've been coding 12 hours a day, about 7 days a week for months.
But reading your comments makes me wonder - perhaps you have already given up on your dreams?
What makes you say that? I was a bit burned out when I wrote this. I took it easy for 2 days and now I'm feeling great again. I think I needed a bit of reassurance and a bit of a break.
I may be wrong here, but I felt that since you said how you'd have proven to yourself even if you do fail. And about the job offers from other companies.
And it's quite natural, right?
You're stressed, and on top of that, you push yourself on the weekends to meet your self-imposed deadline. And you even feel disappointed when you don't meet that deadline.
If I was in this condition, I'm sure even I would want all of this to go away.
And I'm sure that "a bit burned out" would be the understatement of the week🙂. If you hired someone, would you push them so hard?
How do you plan to sustain with a work regimen of 12 hours a day without a break? What kind of condition will that leave you in when you finish the MVP and are ready to present it to the world?
Bob, I'm glad to know that you took a break. The fact that you are feeling great after that, maybe it's signaling something?
I appreciate the sentiment and no, I would never push an employee this hard. I've had hundreds of employees over the past 10 years and I think that I am holding myself to a much higher expectation than I've ever come close to with anybody that I've hired. I also think that that's the difference between the people who take their passion and ambition and spin it into a demanding startup versus the people who work for those startups or the people who want to start a company but can't quite make it happen.
I knew going into this that it was going to be a rough path. This past November I sold my old company which it took me almost 10 years to build. It was a great feeling, bittersweet but I felt very accomplished.
I knew that starting a new business was going to throw me right back into the mindset I was in a decade ago where I may have sacrificed a bit of mental health for the sake of following through with my plan.
I've been through this before, just in a different industry. The one thing that I refuse to do is give up. I'm okay with failure if I try my hardest, meet my goals and fail because I misjudged the market potential. I'm not okay with failure because it got too difficult.
If there's anything that I've learned as of lately, I need to actually take some time for myself. I love coding - it's a lot of fun but if I'm coding a project for my startup 12 hours a day, That's a lot different than working on my project for 6 hours a day and then working on something inconsequential for another 6 hours a day.
I think I just needed to vent a little bit. I got a lot of helpful feedback here And I'm glad that I shared my thoughts. I appreciate your insight, I just refuse to abandon this because I believe in my vision so much that I don't think anybody can convince me that it's not what I'm supposed to be doing right now.
Call me stubborn or arrogant but this project needs to be done. I don't think that I can be okay with giving up.
Wow, what a journey you've had! And I'm sure if you just expect a wee bit less from yourself, this one will end with flying colors as well.
Bob, stay stubborn and stay arrogant 🙂. I know you got this. I'm rooting for you!
Hi Bob
I'm building a data-heavy app, and selling to the enterprise. A lot of what you said sounds familiar. I'd completely echo what others have said:
Getting it in front of people you know (and trust) in the industry can do wonders for your motivation, if you can trust their opinion ("The Mom Test" is essential reading here).
It's old-fashioned advice but if you eat well, avoid toxins, get enough sleep etc you'll find more motivation. Sometimes just having a break and going to do something you really enjoy doing can help.
Matt
First off, can I get you a coffee, or tea? I feel you as a early stage startup founder it can be tough. I will tell you what I have been doing.
Thank you. I appreciate the sentiment. You've just bought me a 15 minute break by reminding me to take it.
This isn't my first startup but it's my first technology-based startup. I'm actually creating the software that I was never able to find over the past 10 years. Software that if it was presented to me while I was running my previous business, it wouldn't have even been a question of whether it was worth $200 a month or not.
There are a lot of people telling me that I need to get some market feedback first however, because of the server costs, I want to make sure my MVP doesn't focus too much on the M. I would rather put aside a budget to cover 30 day trials so that people could try it out without having to put a card on file.
I believe very strongly that the market potential is here based on a decade of first-hand experience on the front lines of that industry, where I could potentially go wrong is if I release it before it has enough functionality to warrant the intended audience to give it a try.
If all of the features say 'coming soon' but I provide them with a better version of what they're already using to manage their offices, I don't know that the desire to change will be there. I want it to be so overwhelmingly helpful the first time they use it that I don't have to worry if they're going to look at it again after more features are implemented.
I actually just finished one of the key integrations right before I responded to this and I'm feeling a lot more enthusiastic than I was yesterday when I put up the initial post.
I appreciate the reminders and I sure as hell need to drink more water. That's a very helpful reminder because I tend to overindulge in energy drinks through long code sprints.
And meditation, I think 2012 was the last time I meditated. I used to do it everyday, I wonder what happened there. Thank you for your input, it really is helpful.
Outsource. As a founder, you have the vision. You don't have to do everything on your own. Spend some bucks and outsource some non-critical work.
Nothing is more important than your health. Business is just business. If you already put some food on the table, everything else is on top. Keep your health and spirit high. Meditate. Leading self is also an art and a key to leading others.
Make sure you spend time also doing the marketing and other "businessy" things, not just coding, and ask yourself when you code a new feature "why am I doing this? Is it part of the core value proposition or is it a nice-to-have?".
As a fellow developer myself, staying away from feature creep is a very hard task to do. Take care of yourself first and don't burn out.
This comment was deleted 5 years ago.
This comment was deleted 5 years ago.
Hey! Thanks for sharing. I checked it out. So you understand what I'm up against. The biggest difference is that I need to do inventory management where the invntory is sensitive banking information that is transferred between companies regularly.
Do you know how much time you've put into that? DId you ever have intent to monetize it? Do you consider it a success?