There are lots of myths and dreams attached to starting a company. Will you be the next Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg? Will you negotiate million dollars rounds of financing with cool VCs?
This is what starting a company really means: e-mailing 100 strangers a day, every day. For the foreseeable future.
That’s it. Of course, there will also be coding involved, but as most founders are programmers, you already know what that looks like. It’s the CEO part that sounds mysterious and fun, when really it’s just contacting people you don’t know to ask/beg for favors. Asking the press to cover you. Asking bloggers to link to your new site. Asking middle managers in larger companies to agree to meet with you.
The stressful part for first-time founders is asking strangers. People you don’t know. That’s quite uncomfortable at first. But you get used to it. Quickly, you’ll learn that sending the e-mail doesn’t actually cost you anything. If you don’t ask, for sure you’ll never get what you want. So eventually rather than wondering “should I send an e-mail to XYZ”, you just do it.
Again and again. Hundreds of times a day.
That’s how you earn your CEO wings.
PS: this post stemmed from a discussion with a recent Founder Institute grad.
