koolhead17
Teach your kids how to behave, teach them virtues, and give them autonomy and freedom to think without bias or pressure. All the money you are collecting for your kids will be gone if they are not taught the right virtues.
Money is a means of living, but virtue goes a long way. It will empower your kids to make the right decisions and help them shape society.
We are so lost in the race of wealth accumulation that we find no time with ourselves, no time for our kids.
Our brain has a switch that makes us wander. The switch makes us feel good or miserable. We have to keep the switch in “good” mode at all times. It is a difficult ask but not impossible.
I have been selling products alone for the last 7.5 years. My biggest learning has been navigating rejections. In the early days, I would feel sad and get angry. I have matured with time. I am not in a rush. My default is “good” mode.
As long as I am not dying and have enough customers to pay our bills and we have challenging problems, what else is needed?
I sell software for a living to the venture capital sector. I meet many people regularly. Many of the successful firms seeking alpha returns have kept relationships above all.
A few founder friends reach out for background checks about the organization from which they are seeking funding. My advice: go to the ones who will stick with you thick and thin. Speak to other founders they have invested in.
A founder can come to an investor in multiple avatars. They might have failed now, but can come back again with a bigger vision and, greater product market fit. They can be successful angel investors sharing deals or co-investors.
The alpha return comes from a relationship as the venture capital industry is a decade-long journey.
Some people in our lives are meant to be left alone. They are not bad people, but they are full of pessimism and jealousy. They can also be self-centered. They live in a bubble where they are judge and jury. Their worldview and actions will never come wrong to them. That constant itch of finding fault in others or why they are the best can make them a devil.
Your life should be around people who care for you and whom you both mutually respect. Also, you are no headmaster or mother fixing a troubled child. Please run away.
A founder’s life juggles between insanity. What can save is having a responsible team. For that to happen, culture should embed maturity as a virtue. As a leader, if you do not ask questions and make people take responsibility, you will get nothing in output.
A founder cannot run around like a headless chicken in every aspect of the company. It is their responsibility to hire a mature team and let them lead. If the founder gets into micromanagement, the culture will rot, and inner fighting and groupism will creep in.
A successful organization is built on a set of values. In founder life, these values get tested quite often. It can be for revenue, hiring, or customers. While they can be beneficial in the short term, they can come to haunt us in the long run. A founder needs to have a clear understanding of everyday decisions.
Some of my friends call me crazy when I tell them, that we purposefully say no to a few customers because they don’t fit our values. For a layman money is coming from customers take it, for us it’s the other way around. We are in a business that is relationship-driven and we are connected on both personal and professional fronts.
We have been running our company for the last 7 years and there were times we were almost out of money, these were the times when the team and the customers both stood by us. When I tell many that I am running a service as a software many go nuts. I like working with people who respect us, help us get better, and pay us.
The same goes for hiring. We are not high-flying paymasters as we are not running a VC-funded business. We are profitable and growing slowly. Many candidate interviews go haywire and many never spoke after the first call. We are fine with it. We are building a mercenary, not an army. In a 1.5 billion population finding half dozen odd is not difficult. The ones who believe in us, our core values and stay for long to reap the rewards.
We don’t value our independence enough—the autonomy to think and live with our conditions.
We have become slaves to the system. It encourages us to horde by participating in discount shopping or prefrontal programming to buy and buy.
I see many riches around me who are very poor within. They have assets for the public, media for the glitters, but debt from the government on taxpayers’ money.
Our forefathers lived and saved money. We live on credit cards. The virtue of frugality has been erased from our dictionary and replaced with fast fashion and hyperlocals.
How many of your friends are living debt-free? How many of them dare to live as they like?
We get lost in work and forget ourselves. One of the perils of modernization is that we are turning into robots. We are so obsessed with material wealth that our relationships with loved ones take a toll. We forget to take self-care.
Our impulsive eating habits, all-nighters, and Netflix will all come back to bite us at some point. We have to start taking care of ourselves as we age. What we eat, what we interact with, and what we watch, all contribute to our well-being. The sooner we start understanding this, we get into meaningful living.
You have to hold your ground and stand tall. Look at the trees: they have withstood all the weather. A founder’s persona comes with chaos, and multitasking is the default. Things will fall apart, employees will leave, competitors will creep in, and customers will leave. In these times, one has to follow the mantra of standing tall and sticking to the grander vision.
A startup outlives as long as the founders are the last man standing.
As a founder, you have to sell. It is not to your customer but to every stakeholder including your team. You cannot expect them to understand everything from inception, nor will they read your mission, and vision statements stuck on the company’s wall.
You have to act, show, and lead it all from the front. This cannot be repealed by an HR or some head of XYZ. As a founder, it is you.
Many founders like to code, sit alone to think or many others run solely after their investors for subsequent funding rounds.
What the founder should do instead is: communicate directly and honestly. I would say over-communicate and talk through the team in thick and thin. Those who are scared will leave, they don’t qualify for your mercenary army.