People way overestimate the life of founders

I'm surprised to see on the comment section that people actually support this load of crap. To any newbies or freshers entering tech this year, don't follow this advice. These CEOs exploit your time to gain revenue and when the time is not good they wouldn't think twice before considering layoffs. Just do your job and go home to your life and family. This advice only applies to entrepreneurs who have huge stakes in the company. Because if the company do well they get millions in returns as dividends. As an employee, even if you work for 25 hours you only get the same salary. Don't follow any so called self procalimed entrepreneurs advocating for the hustle culture. You hustle for your life, not for your boss or your job.

Most startup’s are not founded with great altruistic purpose to elevate human condition. Most startup’s are founded where founders know they can make money or earn status points through little schemes of leveraging their network of investors. Most of them know they can earn more income by just raising some money from friends or VCs. Build a small tech tool and burn through money trying to acquire and retain customers. All this while hiring 100s of employees selling false narratives. What bugs me the most isn’t the thousands of people getting laid off, salary corrections or bankruptcies, it is the mafiaesque organisation built to “create wealth for some by exploitation of countless others” Most startup founders use brute force of content and media coupled with ignorance of people to perpetuate this cycle. It’s the virtue signalling and holier than thou attitude of most founders and VCs justifying all their mindless brutality in the name of strategy and growth which destroys aspirations and outcomes for the many. It’s more relevant in India because of large scale ignorance about money and large scale trust on educated individuals with the right college tags! If you have seen sopranos, most founders are like Anthony soprano - summarily violent, manipulative and ruthless behaviour primarily driven by selfish greed but juxtaposed with moments of vulnerability and struggle justifying his action with a facade of providing for his family. *Replace Anthony soprano with your founder/ceo name* 1. VSS was playing fast and lose with rbi regulations resulting in stock crash and layoffs 2. Byju’s systematically destroyed his own company and wealth of his employees just to ensure he retains majority control 3. Ashneer G and his wife manipulated company books 4. Zerodha founders cheated in chess match or lied about their system failures which lost a lot of capital PS: I refer to most founders because there are few exceptions who don’t fit into this narrative.

Kya dikat hai bhai, udane do paisa. Tumhare thodi hai. Good firms genuinely perform well and return money. The ecosystem is not forgiving -- you don't survive very long if you don't create any big wins. It's an extremely high stress job with very little WLB. You do make money but it comes at a cost. Layoffs are sad but at least those jobs existed in the first place? They wouldn't without VC money. India's VC scene is extremely young and it'll take time before we produce a Google. Entrepreneurs are not always right, they are not always nice either; but they definitely are courageous.

Alright folks, time for some real talk. I fucked up. Big time. And I'm here to share my story so you don't make the same mistakes I did. Back in 2021, I co-founded a web3 startup. Yeah, you know where this is going. I was caught up in the hype, the FOMO, the promise of changing the world through DAOs. Spoiler alert: We raised more than $5M in seed funding, burned through half of it, never hit product-market fit, and ended up shutting down and returning the remaining capital to our investors. Here's how it went down: It all started when I fell down the web3 rabbit hole. I read a few whitepapers, watched some YouTube videos, and suddenly thought I was the next Vitalik Buterin. I had this "revolutionary" idea for a DAO that would democratize venture capital. Sounds cool, right? I thought so too. Now, here's the thing - I'm a great pitcher. Give me a deck and 30 minutes, and I can make almost anything sound like the next unicorn. So, armed with buzzwords and a slick presentation, I hit the VC circuit. And holy shit, did it work. We were a great team, stellar credentials so were able to close the fundraise pretty quick. I still remember the day we closed the round. Popping champagne, dreaming of TechCrunch headlines once we did our Series A, all the jazz. But here's what I didn't realize at the time: I had zero conviction in what we were building. I was so caught up in the excitement of raising money and being part of the "next big thing" that I never stopped to ask myself if I truly believed in what we were doing. Reality hit hard and fast. As we started building, I realized I didn't really understand the problem we were solving. Our target users weren't as excited about the product as we were. We pivoted, then pivoted again. But nothing stuck. Eighteen months in, we had burned through $3M, had no clear path to revenue, and my co-founder and I were at each other's throats. That's when it hit me - we needed to shut this down before we wasted any more of our investors' money. Making that call was the hardest thing I've ever done. Telling our team, our investors, our families - it sucked. But it was the right thing to do. Here's what I learned from this expensive and humbling experience: 1.⁠ ⁠Hype is not a business model: Just because something is trending doesn't mean it's a good business opportunity. Do your own research, understand the market deeply. 2.⁠ ⁠Raising money ≠ Success: It's easy to get caught up in the vanity of a big round. But money just buys you runway, not success. 3.⁠ ⁠If you can't explain it to your grandma, you don't understand it well enough: I couldn't clearly explain our value proposition without resorting to buzzwords. Red flag. 4.⁠ ⁠Team alignment is everything: Make sure you and your co-founders are on the same page about the vision, not just the potential payout. 5.⁠ ⁠Listen to the market, not your ego: We ignored early signs that users weren't as excited about our product as we were. But the biggest lesson? You need 100% conviction to run a startup. Not 90%, not 99%. 100%. Building a company is hard. Really fucking hard. There will be days when everything seems to be falling apart. If you don't have absolute conviction in what you're building, you won't have the resilience to push through those times. Looking back, I realize I was more in love with the idea of being a founder than with the problem we were solving. I was chasing clout, not impact. To anyone out there thinking of starting a company: Please, please, please make sure you have unwavering conviction in your idea. Make sure you're solving a real problem that you deeply understand and care about. Don't do it for the hype, the money, or the status. Do it because you can't imagine doing anything else. As for me? I'm taking some time off to reflect. Next time (if there is a next time), I'll make damn sure I believe in what I'm building with every fiber of my being. I sort of see this happening now with AI, please take a pause. Let's learn from each other. Because trust me, learning this lesson the hard way? It ain't fun. Keep building!

I've been in startups for the last 8 years. From Series B/C onwards to even a unicorn, over time worked at 3. One of them was an outright scam, raised many millions of $s from top investors, and then ultimately died. Also close with CXOs at decent sized startups, and there is a pattern out there. A few thoughts: 1. Being a startup founder is tough. There's pain. Some people thrive in pain. AKA Masochists. Know how to spot a founder who works 15 hours a day because they love their vision vs. somebody who works 15 hours a day because they're masochists. These people thrive in pain, and hence love to see you miserable as you slog away the hours under their leadership. There is absolutely no vision for the future that they have. They do it for the fame, money, and cause a lot of pain in the process. Nothing good comes out of it. Investors love this breed. 2. I wish I'd done more than just leave the scammy startup. At the point, I decided against whistleblowing. Because I thought there's so many people employed here, they would all be impacted. Over time, 200-300 people more joined after I left. Once the scam was caught, all of them lost their jobs. 3. I'm not a coder. I'm a generalist. Over time, my pay grew but not in line with my peers who went into consulting/VC and then came back to big tech/startups. Over time, you disadvantage yourself if you stick around as a generalist in startups for too long. The next team pays you at some premium over the last one, there's no step jump. You need to somehow find a successful startup early, and genuinely, that is impossible to game - even VCs have to bet on 20 to get it right. These are a few disjointed thoughts. I hope they give some insight. My only takeaways: - If you work at a scammy startup, don't stand it. At least, don't stick around. - I earn lesser than my peers (tier 1 undergrad), but I regret nothing. I love my work, and I'll never get over the kick. I cannot imagine working at a larger company ever again. - Ultimately, you have to be optimistic. Believe that India will grow, good founders will come around, magic will happen ❤️

Data on founder Salaries in India https://inc42.com/features/founder-salaries-tracker-fy23-amid-the-funding-winter-how-much-did-startup-founders-earn/

I recently worked at a startup and it was terrible. To be honest, I still worked at one of the better ones but it just sucked. Some of the clear downsides I see - Survival mode leads to chaos. You can be treated anyway and asked to leave whenever even though you left big opportunities to be here - Brand loss to find next job (Big problem) - Trying to make you feel unworthy(Doesn't bother me but I have seen people lose self confidence) - Loss of opportunity to build real skills like building sustainable teams for the long run I think over all working at a startup especially early teams is a losing proposition. Do it only if - - you know the founders/team well - you know the industry and market well and it is a bet you personally believe in - you are secure enough in life that if you go back to your job, you will easily get employed For middle class kids, startups are the worst bets one can take.

I'm seeing so many posts where startup employees are cribbing about things like layoffs, work culture etc etc. Doesn't seem like they have perspective on everything it takes to build a startup. I've built a failed startup myself and have immense respect for founders who are grinding it out there in such difficult recessionary circumstances. And then you have so many of the engineers and PMs cribbing about basics without talking about important things like learning growth, building for the future etc. Why such myopia? I work at a big tech and envy the speed at which startups move, the big responsibility everyone gets to handle, the fast career growth. All these things are being cribbed about. They crib about founders wanting more. Their job is to ensure success, not to give lifetime jobs to entitled people. They have more headaches you can imagine. In my small startup I had a million headaches. I can only imagine how hard it must be to run larger ships. Is everyone joining a startup these days looking for a get rich quick scheme?

A lot of folks working at startups seem to be "passionate " about their job. Some of them possibly, truly are. Some foolishly reverse engineer this passion because they're paid really well and they've been doing a good job and it's good personal PR to say "passion". A few reality checks. 1. Your cool Bangalore lifestyle is a result of investment risks/bets taken by VC's . 2. Your salary is as much about the market demand as it is about your " passion " and talent. 3. Startups will generally lower the bar for hiring processes to meet their demand for talent. Why need so much talent? Because the startup needs to spend that 100M$ Series C that just made them a unicorn. That's how they convince the VC to give more money. "We are going to 2x revenue by 2xing our salesforce and buying 10M$ worth of Saas that will increase our productivity by 5x. " And boom ...100M$ transferred into you SVB bank account. 4. You are as replaceable as a garbage bag on your dustbin. The HR is probably flirting with 10 other like you over linkedin. 5. The "values" this startup apparently espouses are mostly nothing but a honey trap and positioning to lure talent. It's great to have a nice tech job that pays well and allows you to gloat on twitter like a techbro but don't let it fool you into getting an inflated sense of entitlement. You're probably living on borrowed time....and money. :)