I almost quit a year ago, exactly today, then my company got acquired. A story (with pictures! only on Twitter though, link at the bottom.)
This is what I looked like last March 27.
[horrible pic]
One month prior... My dad passed away. I wasn't having a good month. But that wasn't what happened on March 27. I took a photo on March 27 because it was probably the worst I had felt in the last 5 years. Even worse than my dad's death. (We had a complicated relationship).
So yeah. We were dead. Like dead dead. I got my cofounders together on Monday, March 26 (today) for our team meeting. I laid out our situation and that I was going to fire myself.
[journal entry photo explaining the situation]
I woke up a lot of days and worked as hard as I could. But honestly it didn't matter. My fate had actually been set in motion five to ten years prior.
I didn't give up, and I didn't sit on my laurels. Ironically, I started reading a book called "Performing Under Pressure", and the entire premise of the book is basically: Act like you're not under pressure and you'll do your best work.
See, this idea that I had been working on? I started working on the seeds for it in roughly 2008. It's the same idea I'm working on now. Here's me giving a talk about the idea in 2011, roughly 3 years before founding Vidpresso.
As @justinkan and now my coworkers at Facebook know, I'm tenacious AF about this idea, and I know it's gonna happen.
But last year, it didn't seem like it was going to happen. Not only that, it seemed like the entire last 7 years were about to unwind, and I was going to start back from scratch.
Lots of entries like this one in my
@dayoneapp.
[Dead tired journal image.]
And some like this one unfortunately. #openup #mentalhealth #suicide
[suicidal journal image]
But then, one week later. This entry hits my journal.
[Wow, yesterday was insane. journal entry]
Then my journal kind of goes silent because I got really busy for a while.
This isn't some sort of rags to riches story: I knew my idea was solid and I can have people vouch for me, I'm tenacious AF, don't give up, and really the issue with me was that my idea was / is too early (still!)
But the other lesson is that for a certain subset of people: You'll probably always be happiest working on the problem you find most interesting, with your best friends, at a company who cares about your interests. Find that, and hold on to it.
It took me a long time to get those things together, but I think I have all of them now. It's very, very surprising, but I've learned a lot and I'm very grateful.
I now want to try to help others. If you're in your founder journey, feel free to DM! I'll try to help! It takes a long time though... it took me well over 10 years, and I'm still just getting started. Don't be in a hurry.
Also an addendum: The timing is really what worked out. We happened to have the right tech at the right time with the right partners. I'm in love with my job at FB, mostly because I had been derisking it for years.
When we joined FB, Interactivity had just become very important to FB. So it really was all about timing and persistence. We were in the game long enough for it to work out.
---
It doesn't work out for everyone, but it did for me. :)
I almost quit a year ago, exactly today, then my company got acquired. A story (with pictures! only on Twitter though, link at the bottom.)
This is what I looked like last March 27. [horrible pic] One month prior... My dad passed away. I wasn't having a good month. But that wasn't what happened on March 27. I took a photo on March 27 because it was probably the worst I had felt in the last 5 years. Even worse than my dad's death. (We had a complicated relationship).
So yeah. We were dead. Like dead dead. I got my cofounders together on Monday, March 26 (today) for our team meeting. I laid out our situation and that I was going to fire myself.
[journal entry photo explaining the situation]
I woke up a lot of days and worked as hard as I could. But honestly it didn't matter. My fate had actually been set in motion five to ten years prior.
I didn't give up, and I didn't sit on my laurels. Ironically, I started reading a book called "Performing Under Pressure", and the entire premise of the book is basically: Act like you're not under pressure and you'll do your best work.
https://www.amazon.com/Performing-Under-Pressure-Science-Mat...
See, this idea that I had been working on? I started working on the seeds for it in roughly 2008. It's the same idea I'm working on now. Here's me giving a talk about the idea in 2011, roughly 3 years before founding Vidpresso.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vYJ0w3UuM0
As @justinkan and now my coworkers at Facebook know, I'm tenacious AF about this idea, and I know it's gonna happen.
But last year, it didn't seem like it was going to happen. Not only that, it seemed like the entire last 7 years were about to unwind, and I was going to start back from scratch.
Lots of entries like this one in my @dayoneapp. [Dead tired journal image.]
And some like this one unfortunately. #openup #mentalhealth #suicide
[suicidal journal image]
But then, one week later. This entry hits my journal.
[Wow, yesterday was insane. journal entry]
Then my journal kind of goes silent because I got really busy for a while.
But then this really cool thing happened.
https://techcrunch.com/2018/08/13/facebook-vidpresso/
This isn't some sort of rags to riches story: I knew my idea was solid and I can have people vouch for me, I'm tenacious AF, don't give up, and really the issue with me was that my idea was / is too early (still!)
But the other lesson is that for a certain subset of people: You'll probably always be happiest working on the problem you find most interesting, with your best friends, at a company who cares about your interests. Find that, and hold on to it.
It took me a long time to get those things together, but I think I have all of them now. It's very, very surprising, but I've learned a lot and I'm very grateful.
I now want to try to help others. If you're in your founder journey, feel free to DM! I'll try to help! It takes a long time though... it took me well over 10 years, and I'm still just getting started. Don't be in a hurry.
Also an addendum: The timing is really what worked out. We happened to have the right tech at the right time with the right partners. I'm in love with my job at FB, mostly because I had been derisking it for years.
When we joined FB, Interactivity had just become very important to FB. So it really was all about timing and persistence. We were in the game long enough for it to work out.
---
It doesn't work out for everyone, but it did for me. :)
thread: https://twitter.com/randallb/status/1110669172487286784