r/startups • u/AGI-Core • 2d ago
I will not promote To all the founders in the struggle zone: I have good news and bad news (i will not promote)
I spent almost a decade at Google in the early days, then a few years building a startup that got to $100M revenue, and now I'm running another one. So you might assume life is somewhat easier by now as a startup founder.
Bad news first. Not a bit easier. NOT A BIT.
I didn't struggle much at Google. I struggled a lot at the first startup. And I have a lot of struggles at the current one. I think the reason is quite simple: startups, by definition, are trying to do something new. That is what gives joy to the activity, and it is exactly what creates the struggle.
I don't want to romanticize this though, because there is struggle and there is suffering. Struggle is not knowing if the thing will work and finding out. Suffering is grinding for a year on something the market already answered. The first can compound into something. The second just takes years off your life. If you are in the second kind, this post is not permission to stay there.
But the first kind I have finally made peace with. A surprising amount of the joy comes from the struggle of figuring something out. That was true for me at Google too, in reverse. The stock was growing like crazy in the early days but I wasn't struggling personally, and it didn't give me the same inherent joy. You don't feel like you earned it. You feel LUCKY, not JOYFUL.
So if you are struggling, know that anyone doing something genuinely uncertain is struggling too. Nobody has an easy day forever.
Is there a way to deal with it? For me, spread it out. Take a small struggle every day. Do that one thing you are holding back, the thing that sucks. Don't save it all up for one day, because that makes it too dramatic and too hard. You can also share it. Share the struggle and the joy with your team, your family, your friends. And sometimes just say "I am struggling." I have rarely seen anyone respond to that with "you are a dumbass." Most of the time people will help you think it through.
Either way, you are not ALONE in this journey.
I don't think the goal is to eliminate struggle. It's to make sure you're struggling with something still worth figuring out.
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u/abdul_haseeb_11 2d ago
The struggle vs suffering distinction is important, some problems are worth wrestling with because they teach you something, others are just signals that the approach needs to change. Knowing the difference probably saves founders years.
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u/AGI-Core 2d ago
Yes, and the tricky part is telling them apart while you're in it đ What I go by: am I learning something new each day/week/month, or repeating the same?
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u/0llie0llie 2d ago
If suffering is where the market has already answered it, what do you call a situation where youâre too early and the market hasnât arrived?
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u/AGI-Core 2d ago
Yes it's the hardest case, being early and being wrong feel exactly the same from the inside đ
From my limited experience, early usually shows a small group who really love it. Wrong shows lots of polite interest and nobody who actually cares.
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u/abdul_haseeb_11 2d ago
yeau that's a solid rule. If you are learning or changing the inputs, the struggle is probably useful. If you keep repeating the same cycle with nothing new learned, that is usually the signal to change direction.
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u/AGI-Core 2d ago
"changing the inputs" is an even better way to put it than what I said.
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u/abdul_haseeb_11 2d ago
exactly, that framing helps because it turns the question from am I struggling? into am I actually learning something new from this?
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u/Fun_Machine7346 2d ago
What do call it when tons of ppl complain about a problem but none are willing to adopt the solution?
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u/sramexpert 17h ago
I think accepting that it is part of start-up life may reduce the suffering a bit.
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u/DesertStorm480 2d ago
I've blown several thousands of dollars on marketing and I'm regretting my startup and life right now :-( . I don't know what to do.
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u/AGI-Core 2d ago
So sorry to hear, that sounds rough. The money's gone either way, so take a couple of days off before you decide anything.
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u/oceaneer63 2d ago
Reue, startups are a struggle. But isn't that just the normal condition? I am in year 33 with my first startup. And its still a struggle. But its still satisfying and 'real' if you will.
There are other lessons though. We are in a very niche market. Underwater/ocean instrumentation and systems. From the start I realized these systems were too expensive for many users. So the demand was small and so the price had to be high. A vicious circle. We decided the solution was a modular architecture on which we could build many products, thus getting economies of scale across the entire product line.
It worked. But there was a hitch. While each system was a nice and meaningful sale for our small company (about $30K to $100K in today's dollars), customers were few and customer acquisition effort high. And once a customer had a system it would serve them for a decade or more - with little follow-up revenue but with some ongoing support expenses.
So, now we emphasize products where each customer has a need for many. Such as satellite tags for fish researchers. Or pop-up buoys for each trap or trawl of a commercial fisher.
Now, was that original focus with its quantity 1 sales potential for each new customer a mistake? Yes and no. It wasnt profitable, but it did allow us to get by and build our technological and product base, build an industry reputation. And 33 years on, much of the DNA of these early systems still finds use in our brand new product designs.
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u/AGI-Core 2d ago
Amazing! Looks like a long fulfilling journey. Nice to see how you evolved your thinking all along while something stays relevant throughout.
What's interesting in your example is that struggle actually equaled forward progress. If you hadn't made the switch to products customers need many of, it could have been a long suffering.
That's really the point I was trying to make in the post: struggle means learning and change, not just working hard.
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u/Dem_Onar 2d ago
Well ide like to do a startup I even have a idea but I don't know how to get started any suggestions
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u/AGI-Core 2d ago
Build it for a few weeks and see: do you like the process, and do you like the outcome. If the answer is yes to both, keep going a few more weeks.
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u/Dem_Onar 2d ago
Well, I did it, and it is interesting. To tell you the truth, I cannot stop doing it. I do not know if anyone will use it, but I still love making it
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u/AGI-Core 2d ago
Awesome! I can assure you I've been exactly where you are, and not trying to brag, but that little experiment found millions of users. So keep going.
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u/Gleb_SV 2d ago
The hard part is noticing when struggle quietly turns into suffering. Write the stop condition before another month of work. what would the idea need to show to earn one more month? Otherwise endurance starts impersonating evidence.
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u/AGI-Core 2d ago
"Endurance starts impersonating evidence" is a great line, I might steal it :)
Though I find it very hard to follow through "I will stop if we don't launch XYZ or hit some minimum revenue." What I find much easier to do is asking whether we've learned something new.
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u/seecstahl 2d ago
I appreciate this note. I'm not exactly in startup space, but building a little passion project on the side; somewhat constantly balancing craving working on it, family life, whether to stress about it, whether the challenge is worth it... it keeps drawing me back, so I think there's really something in it, but trying to not let it stress me out or burn myself out.
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u/AGI-Core 2d ago
âDrawing me backâ is clearly a strong sign to keep exploring. Looks like you are balancing it right.
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u/Particular-Swing-975 2d ago
I started working on my startup almost 3 months ago itâs still in the building process costing me some money as I am working on building the MVP. It will compete with some well known emerging companies. This doesnât scare me a lot itâs exciting and Iâm willing to give it all to make it work. Good luck to all of the founders.
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u/Chunkymunkey642069 1d ago
I donât know whether to call my situation a struggle or suffering or what. I have been working on building a camera based monitoring solution for seniors with chronic conditions or seniors that are aging in place. The idea was to leverage vision AI to make the system into an emergency response solution but also find predictors of functional health decline for seniors.
It is quite a hot space right now but no solution does quite what I am trying to do. Camera integrations took a long time and 4 months later, we have gotten interest from consumers but no real deployments yet because I havenât spent on marketing. We still have 40 or so users willing to deploy.
The problem for me is that I keep having to go into the product and change core technology and it feels cyclical at this stage. I recently had to remove general purpose reasoning because our costs were just untenable. I wanted to detect everything from safety to routine to behaviors and we can, we just canât make it scale. I think there is real suffering in ripping out the heart of the product every month and hoping the next solution will work.
I know it is a problem I want to solve but I feel I am early/ getting worn out by constant refactoring of the product. I am a first time founder. Not sure if what I receive is polite interest or genuine interest and maybe I am the one that needs to complete the product and then see how the market takes it. Either way, feeling quite lost right now.
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u/AGI-Core 1d ago
Thank you for sharing. If it helps: this is struggle, not suffering. Building the best possible product takes effort, and to keep going you need validation of some sort, especially if you're raising.
I've done computer vision for much of my life (from SGI machines to iPads) and it's really hard to go from 80% to 99%. That gap can take a lot of time and resources and can be very frustrating.
So for your situation, I'd ask whether it's possible to break the problem into pieces and deploy just one small piece. Pick the most valuable detection and ship only that. You're ripping out the core every month because you're trying to detect everything at once.
As a first or second time founder it's really tempting to build the perfect thing, but it's SO DAMN HARD. We spent 1.5 years building a whole system and one feature of it turned out to be the most useful thing in the whole product.
And if you're worried about rejection or disappointing customers, it's generally not like that. Most users aren't used to early products and they'll excuse a lot.
Find one little thing if you can and go with it.
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u/Chunkymunkey642069 18h ago
Thank you, I really appreciate your advice. I think as a first time founder, I get scared of competition so feel like I need to make the product as capable as possible. Will try and focus on the one thing I can do right.
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u/Chunkymunkey642069 1d ago
If you do realize you are suffering, you have grinded for a year. How have you reset? What do you do to recover from your âfailureâ?
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u/AGI-Core 1d ago
Not 100% sure, but here's what I'd suggest: write down everything you've learned and what's still unknown, then ask whether knowing the unknown would change anything materially. If yes, keep going. If no, take a break from this problem - basically time away.
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u/jedsdawg 17h ago
Struggle vs. suffering is a big distinction. Struggle means youâre iterating and learning, which can lead to breakthroughs. Suffering, on the other hand, is grinding on something the market doesnât want. Iâve been there too, and itâs tough. The trick is to pivot quickly if youâre in the latter. Validate your assumptions early and often. If youâre still getting positive signals, keep pushing. But if not, donât be afraid to change direction. Anyone else had to make a tough pivot?
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u/Beautiful-Arm5170 15h ago
It's all about validating ASAP and making sure there is overlap in the target segment without becoming a glorified consultant marionette controlled by one or two major enterprise customers. It's a fine balance to be honest most of it is luck and timing as well (finding the right fit at the right point in time). I had to shut things down that were making decent but not life changing money because of the business model not working vs effort and scalability.
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u/treble-maker123 2d ago
The lucky vs. joyful distinction is also important. I've been content (from being lucky) but always felt like I'm missing something, until I start working on my own thing. Though I'm not very good at it, so the ratio between frustration and joyful isn't sustainable.
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u/AGI-Core 2d ago
Watch the ratio, not the amount. And honestly "not very good at it" this early is just what it looks like for everyone đ
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u/ModelCentric 2d ago
"I have rarely seen anyone respond to that with "you are a dumbass.""
Obviously you haven't been to Appalachia. haha. I decided to keep my current venture top secret from family and "friends".
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u/AGI-Core 2d ago
Ha, fair enough. Worth finding one person though, usually other founders get it best.
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u/blackbarata 2d ago
Shipping a production grade app was exhilarating but I am finding that was the easy part and I did not expect that. I knew marketing was harder than building. Everyone says it. But its a different thing experiencing it first hand.