Founder Support Group: Consumer app | Pre-revenue | Working on MVP | Solo founder
IH has grown into such a huge community, so I'm wondering if there are similar founders (Consumer app | Pre-revenue | Working on MVP | Solo founder) who might want to chat about high & low points / vent / celebrate small wins?
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I'd be happy to share from my past week:
High-ish point: finished road trip from Seattle to Miami, to move back in with parents.
Low point: this whole startup thing felt pretty lonely this week.
Help needed: have you found any interesting books / articles / videos on app UX prototype planning?
Hey man, hope you're doing well.
High-ish Point for me was launching our LTD on PitchGround:
Low point: Same as yours, lonely and managing a Team and delivering things on time is getting harder.
Help needed: Tbh, personally, I overthink about UX a little, so I just push updates to my Beta users and see what they have to say.
I appreciate your words and write-up @delhion!
Do you remember what went through your mind when that first sale happened?
Burdensome is a great way to summarize the feeling of 'things don't seem to progress much until I turn my attention to CX / Dev / Marketing / Outreach'.
If you're willing to share, I'm sure folks would be interested to read about ways you've tried to motivate your team / outsource stuff off your plate?
Great post Vlad... I'm working to launch a listening service for founders.
As you say, there are so many highs and lows, the need to vent and to verbalise what you're thinking to gain clarity is so important.
As a low point, you mentioned that you've started to feel lonely, what aspects are you finding most lonely?
PS - I'm offering a few free sessions whilst I'm setting up the service, if you (or anyone else) wants to make use. I've had experience in listening to highly distressed/suicidal people and now using those skills to give founders the space to talk about what they're doing/how they're feeling. Email address is on my profile :)
Ah @Sm1 what you're building sounds like something that needs to exist in the world - I'm proud of you for tackling a problem as rampart as 'founder burnout'.
If you're thinking of publishing 'patterns observed from listening to distressed/suicidal people', would you be willing to share one or two here?
One guess as to the root cause of loneliness: a lack of peers who can relate to my current highs/lows.
At school / work, there were always people around 'doing the same stuff' to talk things through. When startup founders enter an accelerator program, it sounds like they're once again surrounded by people 'doing the same stuff'.
But pre-accelerator, it has been a strange social-purgatory of having access to unlimited mentors who have 'been where I am' long enough ago that they don't really remember enough to have a conversation, so they sorta just offer pleasantries 'you're on the right track; keep going; if I could do it then so can you'. Has your experience been different?
Thanks for your kind words Vlad!
That's an interesting question regarding patterns. To be clear, I'm not a mental health professional, but from what I've seen, people often have a ton of thoughts that they can't offload or discuss anywhere comfortably. Also, rarely do things happen in isolation, there's often a chain of events and sometimes that's not always clear.
That's a really interesting perspective... it's often said that being a founder is an extremely lonely place to be. Growing up we're surrounded by people in similar circumstances as you say, but then we slowly diverge.
Who else makes up your support network? One particular network I'm part of is Weekend Club https://weekendclub.co/ ... it's always nice to speak with fellow founders.