Enjoy starting your startup

It seems like the best measure for the future success of a startup is how stoic the lives of the founders are.

On one hand that's a really good thing. The days of the .com boom are over, and we don't hire pro basketballers to shoot hoops in our offices anymore. We don't waste any money. (Ideally).

It's also great that founders are interested in taking less of the money at the start in the hopes of 1000 fold payoffs in the future.

Founders are marked by obsessive passion for an idea. (Citation needed...) This, too, is fantastic.

When I wanted to start my own startup, those three things translated into 'under resourced', 'under paid', 'overworked'. From there I couldn't ever hope to start anything.

So here's my not-so-hot tips from a barely started startup founder looking in from the outside:

1) If you need something to get your startup running, you probably need to spend that money. You don't need pro basketballers, but you might need a computer. That's for you AND your staff, ESPECIALLY your programming staff. My boss owned a macbook with a cinema display to answer emails, I had a slow dell with less-than-hd monitor to run very large (but not big) database queries on. I quit.

2) It is possible to start a startup and still eat food. It's even possible to start one and own a house. With kids. And eat out occasionally. If you are starting the 'Build for hundreds, Sell for millions' type, the chances are you will fail, as you know, so maybe take a little bit of wage now to keep you going.

3) Stop working so hard. You aren't getting anything done. Google "efficiency 40 hour week". You know what? Don't. You have already read those articles. And you probably agreed with them. But you are too busy. Lol. Seriously, stop. Take a break!

If you have the startup passion, chances are you won't notice that you aren't getting paid anything, your computer is slow and you are working ALL of the time. That's a good sign that you should be running a startup. My suggestion is that you limit yourself for a better life and better result.

If you don't have that passion, don't force it. I've seen that, I've worked for it, and it's the worst thing you can do. Struggling with these issues is the natural state for an obsessive passionate, but forcing yourself to struggle with them isn't going to make you passionate.