startup journey - update 2

i write my experiences by running a startup in this series and this is the second note.

after publishing the first essay of the startup journey series, i received a ton of messages. many of them were about encouraging us to work better or more and some of them were about helps they can do for us. but one of them changed me and after that, i re-heared the things i couldn't hear before.

an entrepreneur told me that…

“if nothing goes right and there isn't anything you can fix in the team, product, etc, turn the camera and look in yourself. you may find some interesting things to be fixed.”

this perspective changed me and i saw that our problem wasn't about the team, product, market, etc. our problem was about me. i was thinking that i was patient enough, but i wasn't. i was thinking that i was supportive enough, but i wasn't. i was thinking that i should do something to make everything better, but i didn't know that making things better could result from not doing something.

i changed a lot in the 40 days after that essay and now, i can write a book on "what i've learned by being a first-time founder". before starting the startup, i was reading books, and blogs, watching videos, and listening to related podcasts, etc, a LOT! but after i started, i learned somewhat about 5x in 3 months of working on a real startup than 2 years of studying how startups work (in summary, 40x better). so i suggest building, way more than learning. because this is how we actually can learn.

one of the most important things that i learned in the last weeks and want to share with you in this essay is that "the best predictor of learning is the hardness, the uncomfortable sense, and even the angriness you may have when you're thinking about things and trying to fix them." this is what people may call “stress/growth zone” and i felt it by my heart. see my tweet. i posted it about a week ago and that was exactly what i was feeling.

it's super tough. and making good decisions will become much harder with this amount of anxiety, even for the best decision-makers. you will make some bad decisions. that's inevitable. but you have to learn to deal with stress and decouple your stresses with your decision-making process. i can't tell you how because i'm not that good at it. but i know that this is the correct way to handle things.

after all, we passed those tough days and to be honest, we are having tougher days right now! we launched and gained 34 email subscribers from the first introduction. we’ll have one another private launch and a big public launch soon. so we will serve many more people and it's amazing.

we also opened our product and even the whole startup! we’re on github now and you can freely see what’s going on in medx! we also became surprised by receiving our first outside contribution and i’m thinking about the day that there’s NO border between the people “in” and “out” of the team.

you can also contribute to our purpose through that page and it’s more than welcome. besides that github page, we also have decided to write our monthly reports in a public newsletter, called “inside medx.“ to be actually open in every aspect! because we think that this is the best way, and you will see its results in the next updates.

i talked a lot :) and let's get back to work. there is a lot to be done!

you can find me at sina80mor@gmail.com and i’ll be happy to hear your thoughts on this essay.

sina
august 26, 2024