Startup founders are relentless and a bit mad
It’s 4am and you’re not even remotely tired. You’re cranking away at the next visionary idea for your new business, designing, hustling, coding, writing, tweeting… whatever it might be that you have the uncontrollable urge to finish for your, well for you. There is no particular deadline. No boss to fire you or give you shit for not finishing. It’s just you. Working. Or not.
If you’re passionate about your new startup it most likely never feels like work, so why classify it as work? Of course it’s not a hobby. It’s a passion. Who else goes sleepless for days, gets madly obsessed when talking about their project, looses complete track of time while doing ‘their thing’. In fact, I don’t know a single founder who looks at their watch waiting for the end of the day. I can’t imagine doing it myself. I stopped wearing watches when I started doing internet startups in 1999. Don’t get me wrong, I love watches, the design, the mechanics… but I just don’t wear them. Why? The only reason I care to know the time is when I have a meeting, flight or event to be at. For that I have a calendar in my phone that beeps at me. Losing track of time for a founder is critical. It means you’re properly engrossed in your project. It also means you have to have understanding friends and family… good luck with that.
So now you have all of this passion, loss of time, lack of sleep, rants about your industry are now commonplace in your conversations. Sounds to me like a group of people we consider artists. Like Lautrec, Basquiat, Van Gogh, Modigliani, inventing, creating the next work of art through feverishly maddening bouts of passion and sleeplessness. Seeing the big picture of the world while completely withdrawing from it and getting lost in their art… much like your startup. All relentless in their quest to create something.
Founders, you are artists. Creating an image, building hype, a business, a following, a movement out of your imagination. Before entering business entrepreneurship and never looking back at 22 years of age, I was an artist who studied painting, graphic design and illustration. Yes, a BFA. Not an MBA. A designer and painter turned businessman. I dedicate this blog to the artists in the startup world and the arts world alike.
-
5wathi liked this
-
chaswagner liked this
-
jacksonlatka liked this
-
washedbrain liked this
-
kelseyfalter reblogged this from rekatz
-
jdietz liked this
-
lrnzsnts liked this
-
donwb reblogged this from rekatz
-
sparkmaschine reblogged this from rekatz
-
ben-lang liked this
-
kensodev reblogged this from rekatz
-
rekatz posted this
