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Are We Growing or Just Getting Fat?
Let's Get Back to Our Why
Does Startup Success Validate Us Personally?
How We Secretly Lose Control of Our Startups
Should Kids Follow in Our Founder Footsteps?
The Evolution of Entry Level Workers
Assume Everyone Will Leave in Year One
Stop Listening to Investors
Was Mortgaging My Life Worth it?
What's My Startup Worth in an Acquisition?
When Our Ambition is Our Enemy
Are Startups in a "Silent Recession"?
The 5 Types of Startup Funding
What Is Startup Funding?
Do Founders Deserve Their Profit?
Michelle Glauser on Diversity and Inclusion
The Utter STUPIDITY of "Risking it All"
Committees Are Where Progress Goes to Die
More Money (Really Means) More Problems
Why Most Founders Don't Get Rich
Investors will be Obsolete
Why is a Founder so Hard to Replace?
We Can't Grow by Saying "No"
Do People Really Want Me to Succeed?
Is the Problem the Player or the Coach?
Will Investors Bail Me Out?
The Value of Actually Getting Paid
Why do Founders Suck at Asking for Help?
Wait a Minute before Giving Away Equity
You Only Think You Work Hard
SMALL is the New Big — Embracing Efficiency in the Age of AI
The 9 Best Growth Agencies for Startups
This is BOOTSTRAPPED — 3 Strategies to Build Your Startup Without Funding
Never Share Your Net Worth
A Steady Hand in the Middle of the Storm
Risk it All vs Steady Paycheck
How About a Startup that Just Makes Money?
How to Recruit a Rockstar Advisor
Why Having Zero Experience is a Huge Asset
My Competitor Got Funded — Am I Screwed?
The Hidden Treasure of Failed Startups
If It Makes Money, It Makes Sense
Why do VCs Keep Giving Failed Founders Money?
$10K Per Month isn't Just Revenue — It's Life Support
The Ridiculous Spectrum of Investor Feedback
Startup CEOs Aren't Really CEOs
Series A, B, C, D, and E Funding: How It Works
Best Pitch Decks Ever: The Most Successful Fundraising Pitches You Need to Know
When to Raise Funds
Why Aren't Investors Responding to Me?
Should I Regret Not Raising Capital?
Unemployment Cases — Why I LOOOOOVE To Win Them So Much.
How Much to Pay Yourself
Heat-Seeking Missile: WePay’s Journey to Product-Market Fit — Interview with Rich Aberman, Co-Founder of Wepay
The R&D technique for startups: Rip off & Duplicate
Why Some Startups Win.
Chapter #1: First Steps To Validate Your Business Idea
Product Users, Not Ideas, Will Determine Your Startup’s Fate
Drop Your Free Tier
Your Advisors Are Probably Wrong
Growth Isn't Always Good
How to Shut Down Gracefully
How Does My Startup Get Acquired?
Can Entrepreneurship Be Taught?
How to Pick the Wrong Co-Founder
Staying Small While Going Big
Investors are NOT on Our Side of the Table
Who am I Really Competing Against?
Why Can't Founders Replace Themselves?
Actually, We Have Plenty of Time
Quitting vs Letting Go
How Startups Actually Get Bought
What if I'm Building the Wrong Product?
Are Founders Driven by Fear or Greed?
Why I'm Either Working or Feeling Guilty
Startup Financial Assumptions
Why Every Kid Should be a Startup Founder
We Only Have to be Right Once
If a Startup Sinks, Founders Go Down With it
Founder Success: We Need a Strict Definition of Personal Success
Is Quiet Quitting a Problem at Startup Companies?
Founder Exits are Hard Work and Good Fortune, Not "Good Luck"
Finalizing Startup Projections
All Founders are Beloved In Good Times
Our Startup Culture of Entitlement
The Bullshit Case for Raising Capital
How do We Manage Our Founder Flaws?
What If my plan for retirement is "never retire"?
Startup Failure is just One Chapter in Founder Life
6 Similarities between Startup Founders and Pro Athletes
All Founders Make Bad Decisions — and That's OK
Startup Board Negotiations: How do I tell the board I need a new deal?
Founder Sacrifice — At What Point Have I Gone Too Far?
Youth Entrepreneurship: Can Middle Schoolers be Founders?
Living the Founder Legend Isn't so Fun
Why Do VC Funded Startups Love "Fake Growth?"
How Should I Share My Wealth with Family?
How Many Deaths Can a Startup Survive?
This is Probably Your Last Success
Why Do We Still Have Full-Time Employees?

Startups are Built at the Expense of Founders

Wil Schroter

Startups are Built at the Expense of Founders

That's not how this works. We don't get the benefit of sitting on our thrones and commanding our armies until much, much later in life — and in many cases, never. What we are guaranteed along the way is a wraith-like drain on our life force (D&D reference there, fellow nerds) in every possible facet.

What we need to understand, and accept, is that our startup's future can very easily come at the expense of everything we hold dear. It's very much hard-coded into how the Founder Journey works, and damn, do we pay a lot of bills along the way.

First, We Pay With Our Savings

Long before we raise money or earn some revenue, 100% of our "income" is just our personal savings. We use terms like "sweat equity" as if working for free somehow magically puts food on our table or pays our rent in the process.

We not only work for free, but we also begin a long and vicious cycle of ripping through all of our savings, and then, when that's not enough, we go out and take on new debt in the form of credit cards, lines of credit, and even that one "interest-free financing" scheme we used to buy laptops for everyone. Yeah, that's signed in our name, too.

Lots of people burn through their savings, but we take it up a notch. We start creating new debt we not only never would have had before, but probably have no way to pay off in the future. Put simply, we start off by bankrupting ourselves.

Then, We Pay With Our Health

But, we're irrational morons (I am one of you), so we think that's not enough. We also put ourselves on a path where no matter what we do, we'll be wrong almost all of the time, because there's no possible way to get all of this right. We're building something that has never been built before, with a team that has never worked together, in a market we invented 9 seconds ago, so we can't possibly know the answers!

That lack of “knowing” translates to not enough time to maintain our physical health (the "Founder 15" is real), a non-stop siege on our personal self-worth (we're wrong all the time), and an express pass toward anxiety and depression (unless you really enjoy the word "no" all day!).

We keep incurring those expenses because in our minds we believe they are temporary, similar to how we feel about our financial costs. What we don't realize is that even if the business side improves, the stress it takes on our health often increases as the demands on our life get amplified.

Finally, We Pay With Our Relationships

All of this stress gets mapped right to one place — our relationships. There's no version in this process where being stressed out and financially stretched 24x7 leads to happy, healthy relationships. It doesn't matter if it's our spouse, our kids, our family, or even just those friends we used to hang out with. Our startup consumes us at the expense of all of them.

Unlike most employees, we can't turn it off. Our staff can go home at the end of the day and know that they've got a minute until they have to turn it on again. We don't get that luxury. That's because our staff only needs to worry about themselves, and maybe their team. We have to worry about everyone, all the time.

That nonstop pull totally ruins our relationships because it starves the two things that relationships need — time and focus. Slowly, but surely, both are stripped from us, by our own doing, leading all of our relationships into a dark place.

So... When Does This End?

Well, maybe never. Oddly, it doesn't end when we become more successful because the draws on our time and emotion only increase. It gets worse when things don't go well because we're constantly stressed over pulling it all together.

Our startup success doesn't pay this expense — only we can pay it, by stepping back and evaluating how much we're willing to accept, and in most cases, just refusing to pay more. If we don't stop paying the costs of this journey, no one else will pay it for us.

In Case You Missed It

What Problems DO Just Go Away With Time? While our startup problems don't go away entirely, our ability to manage them changes over time.

What to Expect in the First Year (podcast). As Founders, we think we know how our products and businesses will look and function for years to come, but as with time, it's nearly impossible to expect the unexpected.

Growth Isn’t Always Good. In many cases, our focus on growth runs counter to what our goals really should be: becoming a better startup — not just a bigger one.

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Martin handley

I’ve not read anything so true in all my life.

This article resonates with me so much!

since launching my business in March 2020 self funded. The business has almost broke me… mentally, physically and financially several times!

I was down and depressed, broke, spending more time in the office than with my wife and kids… but things were going great from the outside looking in…

however it couldn’t carry on the way it was going. The business was growing but I was killing myself…

with persistence, resilience and most of all action, 18 months of weekly hypnotherapy sessions and weight loss surgery I’m now 5.5stone lighter, my mental & physical health is much better and I’ve halved the size of my team down to my core team players in the business saving me time, money and stress.

Putting in the hard work 24:7, late nights, early mornings, weekends has to pay off someday and the persistence and resilience is why not every founder or startup makes it to the top.

Sleep is overrated anyway right? 🤣

If it was easy then I guess everyone would do it, but how long do you keep on pushing despite the odds.

Good luck to everyone else on this journey.

Reply2 years ago

I rarely comment. You absolutely nailed every aspect. Kudos. The one thing you should add are the late-night terrors! Excellent piece.

This is a great article. The draining on personal savings, getting into deeper debts, strain on relationships, etc, If you've not been through this you can never understand...

I'm not sure why this article came back out, but I'm glad it did since I didn't see it the first time. From one angle this article can make anyone depressed, but I view it as perspective that can set expectations. As I continue to heal from my 12 year startup journey I've been given a lot of encouragement from these type of articles, the Startup Therapy podcast, the Startups community, and others in my life. Recently I was recommended a book called "The Gap and the Gain" and I highly recommend it. My ideal outcome was not obtained, though I came razor close. Regardless, when I focus on all the gains, I realize how much farther I am then when I started. Thanks for the therapy, it's always good to receive!

Absolutely agree! I have been through two set backs with my start-up, working now towards first financing. Since it has already been prooved I will not give up and will always find the way to success with my project, I am looking to find a personal start-up/life balance which will be sustainable as start-up journey is an ultra-marathone!

The relationship portion is so on point. Thank you for this article. Only someone that has built a start-up from the ground up could write on this topic so eloquently. This is our life in a nutshell.

1 Replies

I love your openness and honesty. Its so true, startup founders are a very strange bunch to put themselves through this...but a truly inspiring group to be part of.

1 Replies

Absolutely nailed it especially on the health part. Wanted to say I appreciated you writing this

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