DSHGSonic’s Post

Successful startup founders are not unique. They aren’t smarter than you. They aren’t more talented than you. They aren’t more qualified than you. But what they are is more dedicated, driven and deluded enough to make it happen Mark Cuban didn’t take a vacation for SEVEN years after starting his first business Gary Vaynerchuck says new founders need to work at least 18 hours a day in the first year (I can vouch for this!) It's your mindset and your attitude that build a startup. Or would you argue otherwise? #GrowthMindset #Founders #Startups

These posts are in my feed all the time. The "how bad do you want it" or "hustle until the wheels fall off" garbage. I grew up playing hockey in Canada, so my brain has been washed in this macho speak, and I know how unmotivating it is to hear this "advice" when you're in the trenches. Being a successful founder doesn't look one way. Being a successful founder doesn't have to look this way. Mark Cuban didn't take a vacation for seven years, but he also didn't have kids until he was 45 years old. Gary Vaynerchuk started working for his family's established business, and while he did help it grow significantly, he started a few rungs up the ladder before launching his own. What's the message to female founders in all this? If you can't work 18 hours a day you won't make it, so why bother trying? Wait until you're 45 to have kids, so people can badger you for 20 years about when you're going to "settle down and start a family"? I can't think of a single woman that has posted this type of "advice" to other founders. Working 18 hours or waiting to have kids until you're 45 years old is a choice. It is a choice that breeds the same founder story, the same background for fundraising, and the same tunnel vision for product development. Three weeks ago I attended The Care Summit and, for the first time, met other founders with stories more like my own and not like these ones in my feed. These are founders that: - are also mothers to young children while building a startup - have navigated postpartum care - experienced the challenges of childcare in America while working - taken care of elderly relatives while working and raising their own family - dealt with end-of-life care and navigating hard conversations. These are founders, successful founders, having built or are building products that are going to make a difference. They are not working 18 hour days. They have perspective from the lived experience of encountering a problems in their day to day lives and rolling their sleeves up to fix it. Maybe it takes them longer to build it, or the runway to launch doesn't look like the "standard" but who sets that standard? Those working 18 hours a day at the expense of everything else in their life. No thanks. If you've got an idea- build it. If you've built it- launch it. If you want to get it funded- pitch it. Forget the "hustle" mentality.

More hours does not mean more success 🤦♂️ We shouldn't conflate the actions of hyper-conscientious people with some idea of the "correct" way to do things. These people would put 18 hour shifts in at Starbucks, because they don't know any other way to be. It's a sign of low-fidelity thinking to state so brazenly that founders must work 18 hour days or they won't be successful. These people and these businesses represent the 0.1%. They're not an example to be followed for 99% of people. Remember, for each of these 'work themselves into the ground' types, one or two might be successful, but half of the rest die of a heart attack in their mid-40s. There are millions of founders who built successful businesses as side hustles. Some did so on auto-pilot, or even taking the good-old 'doing the amount that is required' approach. We ought to be teaching others how to live successful, sustainable lives. We should desire a world full of successful, sustainable businesses. Not some kind of rockstar founder dream that many of these people are so desperate to see themselves as.

Here's part 2 of our Founder's Glossary! 🎉 A collection of made-up terms that reflect real feelings and struggles that almost all start-up founders have felt at some point in their journey. Have you ever experienced something similar? Let us know in the comments, and let's see how relatable these feelings are! #startups #founders #venturecapital

I started Pivotal Talent 2yrs ago. There have been ups and downs. But being prepared and documenting the process has kept me going. In the spirit of helping others, here is an up-to-date roadmap of how I went from Day 1 to Day 736. Comment below if you’d like to know the steps in detail. #founder #founderstory #business #startups

Now *this* is how you should slide into Monday… I’m gonna be more like this double back salto tuck with a triple twist guy. “How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” – Anne Frank #Startup #Founders #StartupInvesting #StartupBuilding #JustDoIt

In 2023, I set a goal to dive into my own venture while also joining my family business. Even though I’ve spent most of my career working on startups and learning a lot, taking on these two very different projects has been a whole new experience. One is my personal ‘baby’ project along with my friends, and the other is about helping scale our family business. It’s been a year now, but it still feels like the journey is just beginning. Looking forward to sharing my learnings and thoughts along the way. Here’s to what lies ahead! #growth #newbeginnings #startup #business

Act with intentionality, make it a practice. If it makes you move slower, speak slower, decide more thoughtfully...that's good. If you're in a situation that's ahead of you or moving too fast, you're probably too late anyway. Focus on the thing you could most likely impact from where you are now. The past is gone, it's only in your head now. #startups #founders #sales

Finish Something. Anything 💡 Stop Researching, Planning, and Preparing to do the work And Just do the Work 🤯 It doesn't matter how good or how bad it is. You don't need to set the world on fire with your first try 🔥 You just need to prove yourself that you have what it takes to produce something 🚀 Courtesy: James Clear #StartUps

Culture is a strong organizational foundation when building a company, upon which values, behaviors, and shared goals are established. This starts from the founder of the company. How many of you (founders) have written at least 3 points on what kind of culture you want to incorporate or establish in your company, before when you launched your venture? #culture #founders #startupculture #startups #foundation Follow 👉 Praveen GAJJALA  Push 🔔 for notification & Repost 🔁 with your network