Low Point
Update: I became fine like a week after. Reading it now feels like I exaggerated my feelings lol. But that's how it goes I guess, it seems too real when you are in the moment.
It takes me an enormous amount of energy to write this. To be honest I haven’t been able to get a whole lot done over the past week or so. I went full time into building my product about two months ago. I had been tinkering with building for a while even before that.
Although we achieved many things in this journey, it still feels insufficient. We incorporated, grew a waitlist of customers, launched, made our first few dollars on the internet. But it's not enough when your survival depends on it. Startup gurus talk about exponential growth, millions of dollars in ARR and user count – we don’t have any of that. You simply can’t build in peace when you are focused on survival.
We have done so much (progress) and we can probably do more. But it's hard to keep yourself motivated when there’s no end in sight. I underestimated the amount of mental resilience it's going to take to run a startup. You don’t know where your next paycheck is going to come from.
Everyday you deal with doubts and fears about the future. What if my product fails? Will I ever be able to make enough money to sustain myself? And all of this is happening when your friends are living real ‘lives’. Yours is just hacking away on friday nights. You want a day off, in fact you aren’t even working much but you just can’t take a day off in peace.
Everyday on X you see cracked kids building world class products, getting into YC and just working on cool stuff in general. At some point in life you realize – “Man, I’m not that guy. I’m just ordinary.” Once you are out of that delusional startup phase – reality hits you and hits you hard. Everyday tells you no one cares about you. No ivy league alma mater, no big tech name, no big achievements really. Could be that I’m in a bubble but that doesn’t matter. How you feel is real even if you are within a bubble.
All of these problems are compounded especially if you are an immigrant founder like I am. Having just graduated, I started up. No one around me is doing it. They say it's lonely at the top, turns out it's lonely at the bottom too lol. I don’t have a lot of time to figure my stuff out. The immigration clock is always ticking.
I learnt so much through this journey. I learnt to code, design and grow a product from 0. But I question myself – all of it for what? I can’t put many of the things I did on a resume. And even if I did, who really cares? I’ve applied to many many jobs online, even those that seemingly fit my profile really well only to face rejections.
I was once a guy with seemingly everything in my hometown in my home country. Why did I long so much to escape it all? As they say – you may go anywhere but you only go with yourself. Maybe I’m the problem after all.
I don’t know what’s going to happen in the future. I don’t know if I should just quit and look for a job (as if that is easy!) At this point nothing interests me and the future only feels dark and bleak with nothing to look forward to. I hope something changes.