Start, then learn
A lesson from doing the wrong thing
There is a lot of advice out there on how to build a startups. While a large portions are great, paradoxically, they all sums up to pretty much zero. In my experience, picking out the ones that apply is even more crucial.
One incredible advice was “start then learn.” This is so true. I know, because I did the opposite for 7 years. I left my cushy investment banking job to join an early stage startup because I wanted to learn how startups work. Fast forward a few minutes, I had already spent seven years at the same company, all the while telling myself I was learning the important things in running a startup.
It was a great excuse. I learned quite a wide variety of skills that couldn’t be taught elsewhere. I had a front row seat to a lot of eye-opening experiences. To name a few: complete revenue collapse (think it was about 90%), decimating rounds of layoffs (down to 12 people from ~60), long winded pivot to a new product, rewarding exit, and the integration afterwards.
These are just the greatest hits off the top of my head, and there are more interesting stories over this seven-year span. At the time, it felt rational.
Only after I made the leap and started my own business, C’mon Esports, that I realized I had wasted half of my time at Streamlabs.
The rate of learning at your own startup is simply exponential. The forcing function is much more powerful. I became fully technical, and learned to recruit, to write marketing copies, to find growth and more.
The challenges are probably the same at both Streamlabs and C’mon but the incentives are different. At Streamlabs, I get paid by getting through the day. At C’mon, each day passing means one fewer day of runway.
I heard somewhere that startups is the place to learn to do things that you didn’t know how to do. So yea, start, then learn.1
Not sure who said this line first, but I first saw it in my old boss Ali Moiz’s Twitter. At the time, I already started but it resonates so much that I kept thinking about it.