The Startup Addiction Defined

Posted on April 13th, 2007 by Zach.
Categories: General.

I was asked recently what it takes to start a company. Having no idea really, I had to think about it for a bit. What exactly had we been through recently with Reware? In the end I really couldn’t give a good answer, but here are some thoughts that come up when people asked things like this.

Someone once told me that every start up takes at least 3 years to even remotely feel like a normal business. You know - semi-regular paychecks, some pretense of business infrastructure, and that always elusive concept; cash flow.

Every new entrepreneur says the same thing when they get advice like this: “Yeah, but we are going to do it differently”. “It will go faster with us. “This idea is the killer app”. And on it goes. Typically you say this for about three years, until such time as the company takes off, or crashes in a horrible ball of flame taking your oh so fragile ego with it.

High stakes poker this stuff, and yet that is the appeal. The idea of going to the same workplace to do the same job day in and day out is too unfathomable for most startup junkies. I let you in on a little secret: essentially entrepreneurs are lazy. Not in the “lay on the couch and do nothing” sort of way. No, it is a more deceptive laziness - One where you work way too many hours and feel like there are not enough hours in the day to finish what you need to do. See? So Lazy.

OK so maybe that doesn’t exactly jibe, but here’s the thing: The startup is a project, not a job. It has a beginning, middle, and most importantly – a finish. When we started Reware for example, I am pretty sure I had my own project finish in mind. I didn’t know what that point was exactly, I just knew that I always have a notion that this is not forever. That there will be other adventures, other companies, other projects to come.

That is the startup addiction – work like crazy all day everyday, get to a point where the business is stable and plan to have much smarter, more organized, and reliable people run the thing. Maybe change your title from “Managing Partner” to “Creative Strategist”. Come in two days a week. Surf a lot. This is the dream that keeps you going. And it’s not the life of leisure that drives this, in fact that leisure is boring after about four days. No, it is the idea that the job or the project is done. That you worked like crazy to an end point. You achieved something. And then you took a much needed break.

This is a psychosis of some kind, I am not sure where it comes from, but there are some specific criteria of the disease:

Work can’t feel like work. It is part of everyday life, in my case the things I am reading at home pertain directly to the places I am traveling for quasi work/vacation hybrids, to the things I am doing in the office. It is the perfect combination of OCD and ADD, both obsessive and impatient, hyper-focused and scattered. I recently took a trip to Mexico where I did absolutely nothing related to work. A true vacation and it was wonderful – for about 4 days.

Denial. 90% of the work stinks, but the other 10% makes you forget that fact. Anyone who as ever been to sea for an extended amount of time knows this phenomenon. Most of the time at sea you are cold, wet, and tired. It’s that one sunset that is so beautiful it makes you tear up. That’s what puts you back out there again. Startups are no different, you forget the pain. I hear pregnancy has similar aspects, but I can’t actually attest to that. Maybe someone else can comment.

There is an inability to pace one’s self. I always wanted to be a teacher, and I think I was a pretty good one – for about 4 weeks. What I could never figure out was how modulate my energy level to last over a whole year, let alone a career. Not only that, but I didn’t want to. There is something fundamentally appealing about the project that swallows your life, and then lets you go surfing later. By the same token there is something horrifying about evenly paced work day in and day out. I just can’t do it. And this is why I leave teaching (one of the most difficult and important job on the planet, incidentally) to people more talented than myself.

In the end I don’t understand the point of work. I understand the value of projects that will fundamentally change the world and I can get into that idea, that is what drives everything else. But work everyday, just sounds horrible. Don’t get me wrong, I have friends for whom work is just a mechanism to do the other things they love. Work is not a calling, but a way to pay the bills, put food on the table. It enables the real passion for them - creation of art, travel, sailing, whatever. Work is just a means to an end, and I can respect that - even if I could never put in that kind of time.

No, give me something that swallows my whole life for three years. Give me something where I will be alternately swearing and whining because I am trying to make things happen that have never been done before, but I think they should be easier. Give me something that sucks my savings and credit down to nothing. Give me the chance to make the big change.

And this is called entrepreneurial. Or stupidity, they really are pretty hard to distinguish.

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