We have two tasks as founders. Not more.

As a founder, I have two tasks ⬇️
(Unfortunately, it took me many failed attempts to realize that)

1. Bring the money
2. Keep going...

Let's deep dive

1. There are many ways to bring the money: investments (VC, angel, etc.), selling products, grants (e.g., EU grants, companies like Google, Microsoft, grants), crowdfunding, etc.

Unfortunately, as harsh as it is, if the project doesn't bring money, it will slowly die, whether there is a dark mode or not ;) I worked on a couple of projects like this, and it was painful to keep going (2).

2. Keep going is more complicated than it seems.

🥴 Keeping the motivation going, bringing new ideas, pushing, be better than worldwide competitors. It is a constant pressure.

🥴 Learning along the way. AI is accelerating things and opening new challenges and opportunities.

🥴 There is no room for many big, bad decisions. No matter how big you are, you can always make some errors, which might bring you significantly back. Couple of them, and things can go quite bad.

🥴 What to build next? Which sales channel to squeeze? What's the ROI of next feature? What to do with the high churn rate? How the AI change my business? How to keep going with every activity? Never ending questions which needs to be solved and arising along they way.

🥴 Life happens. It doesn't ask. And we know it can suck from time to time.

Keep going is much easier when you bring money and can pay people to solve the challenges.

I noticed that:
Bringing the money is understimated by 1st time founders (was in the same spot) and 2nd Keep going is understimated by most the founders. To get experience with 2nd, the founder has to experience years of building, working, pushing.

Mental comfort can define if you make or not in every stage of the product.

I believe that things like brand building, design thinking, clean code, and personal branding are all sub-tasks of the main task. I even thought that making money was the most important part, but the more I am among founders, the more I think the combination of these 2 points defines successful founders vs. not.

In summary, founders must bring in money and not burn out. If any other sub-task doesn't solve these two points, we should kill it.

What do you think?