On weekdays, except for cycling, I’m spending most of my waking hours working. I’m an early riser, I work from home, and my team is basically 8 hours behind me which means meetings tend to be in the evening. With that combination, a long working hours become somewhat inevitable.
The crew is getting larger, the business is growing, and I’m gaining more experience on all sorts of things, which is all wonderful. For example, I’m spending a lot more time with spreadsheets, I got a lot more familiar with accounting by necessity, and I developed appreciation for the system that was developed and the professionalism of people involved there.
I have a wonderful team. They all bring something unique to the table, we provide an unique opportunity for them to grow. I enjoy sharing my experience to them, informing the business context and challenges to them, encouraging them to take initiatives. At times it almost feels like advising and mentoring them. I suppose you can call that my management style. I became more intentional about it.
At times, I find myself doing the kind of things that I didn’t enjoy when I was reporting to a CEO. I now understand where he was coming from far better :-), and I also totally understand the reactions of the people I’m doing that to. Oh the irony.
The life at a startup is basically always an uphill battle. There are always problems that needed to be solved yesterday! My previous experience and our great advisors taught us what should be avoided and where the hardship lies, but still you often have to take on some challenges knowing it’s hard because there’s no other way around it!
I don’t know where this journey leads, but I tell people that the point of a startup is to enjoy the journey itself.
2022 will be exciting for Launchable. One thing I do hope is that the whole company to finally get to meet together.