One of our favorite analogies to company building is riding a rollercoaster. It mirrors the peaks and troughs of company building in so many ways. Just as you hit major milestones and celebrate, you of course set new, bigger milestones, which ratchets up your stress levels all over again. And from time to time, stuff blows up! Which gives you lows that never before felt quite so low. Even the most successful startups have faced their share of adversity — it’s part of every company’s journey.
As CEO, how you respond in these moments, what you do to manage the pressures of being at ever-increasing heights, is amplified 10X by your team. On a regular day-to-day basis, they’re looking to you to understand how they should feel, how they should react, and how important something is. But during times of crisis, this is magnified exponentially.
Crises are when your team leans on you the most. It’s a critical part of your job to recognize this and despite what you’re feeling yourself, you have to be a champion your team can draw energy from, always.
- Acknowledge setbacks and don’t hide the truth - Your team is smart and if you’re hiring well, smarter than you. Sweeping bad news under the rug will erode trust and drive your best people away.
- Save your freak out for your personal board - Stay calm in front of your team and recognize that if you lose it, they will too. It won’t help problem solve the issues at-hand and will also contribute to driving your best people away over the longer-term.
- Explain this happens to every company - Remind your team this is typical for every growing company. Use a popular Steve Jobs or Elon Musk example to illustrate and normalize what you all are experiencing is an expected, even though unplanned, part of every startup journey.
- Double-down on vision - Bring back to the fore what you’re building and why, rallying your team on the company vision you’re all working towards.
References
What’s a personal board?
What Startups Are Really Like
October 2009(This essay is derived from a talk at the 2009 Startup School.)I wasn't sure what to talk about at Startup School, so I decided to ask the founders of the startups we'd funded. What hadn't I written about yet?I'm in the unusual position of being able to test the essays I write about startups. I hope the ones on other topics are right, but I have no way to test them. The ones on startups get tested by about 70 people every 6 months.So I sent all the founders an email asking what surprised them about starting a startup. This amounts to asking what I got wrong, because if I'd explained things well enough, nothing should have surprised them.I'm proud to report I got one response saying:
paulgraham.com
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