>I’ve always struggled with confidence issues. As a way of compensating for this, I leaned on my programming licks; here was at least one thing that I was awesome at.
>When I got into the startup world, something shocking happened. I started to meet people who were my equals, or even worse, better than me! This caused an existential crisis.<p>Spot on. It's not just you, buddy.<p>Edit: Contrary to popular naysaying, there <i>are</i> some of us who do like reading about others' trials and errors. I also loved the article on rock climbing. Keep it up!
When you say that "Bootstrapping a startup is stressful", are you only referring to the time before you raised the $2.5 million? How long was that?<p>EDIT: According to CrunchBase you raised $500K two months after your company was founded, and another $2 million 13 months later. I'm sure you just used the word without thinking much about it, but technically you bootstrapped for all of 8 weeks. :)
Ahh, I remember when I was 20 & how nice to think what you have to say is important. I've personally found that people want to read about functionality. They might want to read about your personal stress after you've become successful but chances they're more interested in reading about a new integration or how to look at something different.
The "MIT syndrome" thing is crucial. I think the most important trait in a startup leader is humility. To build a kick-ass sustainable company, you absolutely, positively must be comfortable working with people who are (in some or most respects) smarter than you.<p>Also, I find it very interesting that the "high" of this roller coaster is the funding.
Thanks for writing this. As a 20-something startup CEO, I frequently want to write about something mundane (or not) but often choose not to for reasons of confidentiality or that I worry some things will cause problems for me later. I don't think I'm a startup god, or an expert at all. Sometimes it would just help to vent or have a discussion about something with strangers who are in similar positions as me.<p>Unlike some of the other commenters here, your post didn't strike me as self-important. Just looked like you felt like sharing and wanted to have a dialog.
Thanks for the post; running a company is not only about making the right decisions, it is also about living with the bad ones. I think this blog post is a good testimony that helps with that.
I don't see much traction here:<p><a href="http://siteanalytics.compete.com/attachments.me/" rel="nofollow">http://siteanalytics.compete.com/attachments.me/</a><p>It looks like aqui-hire is the best option for attachments.me
"I began getting depressed about the lack of a life I had outside of work. I’d bring this bad mood to work with me, in turn making it a worse place to be.<p>I’ve since made an asserted effort to dedicate time to my social life: going on trips with friends; going on dates; and, most importantly, getting work completely off my mind occasionally."<p>Serious question (and my thoughts) here I'm not trying to be cute. Regarding your "social life".<p>Do you think you will grow out of this? Because what do you think is going to happen if/when you are married and have children and aren't living in SF or some exciting place and have much on your plate?<p>The best way to insure that you can live the life you want and have some fun is to put all the effort in that you can now and try to put off having fun until a bit later on. Now is when you have energy and should be able to work non-stop with very little else. (I didn't surface for air for 7 years working 6 to 7 days a week ..)<p>I point this out also because the world is littered with people who didn't get into a good school because they spent a bit to much time worrying about missing something or having fun and are paying for that later. I'm sure you've met people like this in your high school.<p>It's a little unclear how long you worked before you realized what you wrote. It was certainly less than two years since you wrote this: "I’ve grown a lot as a person in the past two years." That's not a long time to be denied the pleasures of other people and fun (look at people on tours of duty in the war or speaking of my own experience).<p>The fact that you never had a problem until later means you really haven't dealt with the situation you are in now in the past which I think is what you are saying. Things were easy for you until you got around a group of people who were also good. I know first hand about the MIT syndrome since I saw others that suffered from it at the school that I went to which was quite good.<p>I didn't suffer from that for one simple reason.<p>Things were never easy for me it always took hard work and it also took plenty of effort for me to get into the school I went to. So when I got there I didn't fall apart if I got a "B+". I just kept chugging away while the ones who were "so much smarter" who got in with their top grades and SAT's wilted under the pressure of having to do so much work. This was a long time ago compared to when you are in school. So to answer your question, no, things haven't changed that much.<p>You've got plenty of time to have fun. Now is the time to work as hard as you possibly can with minimal breaks in order to achieve your goals. You might not surface for air for a few years but it will probably be well worth it.<p>One last thing. There will be times in life when you might have some crisis either in personal life or business that will require you to work all the time. I had a case where several of my top people left, I was in the middle of a legal case, and a breakup, and I still had to show up to work doing the job of three people and deal with personal issues and family fights. Having to go through that and knowing I could (similar I'm sure to having climbed a certain mountain like you are doing) was a great experience that made me realize that I didn't have to be scared of the unknown and that I could handle it.
This article might have a good point, but it's hard to find it amongst all the "my friends and I are really cool and awesome people" speak.<p>Does this article, coupled with the fact that the author submitted it himself, strike anyone else as terribly vain?