Month 10 — liftoff
Radar is always dabbing in his sleep.
About a month ago, I was doing the metaphorical equivalent of sitting on the floor packing my room away, slapping my thighs “well that was fun, but life goes on”, and cheerfully transitioning my spring, summer and fall effort into a bootstrap-able side project.
I reasoned that this was exactly the kind of passion project I could feel proud to work on after hours alongside a 9-5 that pays the bills. The kind of thing I would surprise people with at dinner parties “oh, I didn’t know you did XYZ”, or feature in the #random slack channel at work. That I could take my year of learning and give it to the friends of close friends who have begun showing up asking for advice and guidance on donor/surrogate family forming.
The truth is, it had been a really amazing 9 months I wouldn’t have given up for the world.
I had learned a ton about the donor/surrogate fertility space.
Faster than I had ever learned about anything before - both because I had to, and because I wanted to.
I had shot my shot and done a million things that scared me.
Created a team of missionaries. Led them through the product development lifecycle. Talked to incredibly powerful people and tried not to let on how nervous I was. Put my body on the line.
I had powered through things I was not good at and put my ego aside.
Especially crushing-feeling when certain skills seemed to come easily or readily to others but not to me.
Most of all, I had experienced the highs of solving real things for real people, dogfooding my own products/services, and realizing that I was really on to something that I thought the rest of the industry had overlooked.
But - and founders will understand this - I was getting lonely, and I was getting tired, and I was convinced that what I wanted to work on and the impact I wanted to make was still incredibly important but would perhaps never be anything more than a modest side project. And this was fine with me.
The reality is that there is so much invisible time that must elapse between when you decide to work on something and you achieve lift-off. Whether this is navigating what another founder has since called the “ideation maze” or otherwise, founding is such a mental game and it takes so much endurance.
If you’re running low on power, rest. So I began wrapping up work with some relief.
I began applying for and getting callbacks for product interviews.
I dusted off my old PM frameworks.
I prepared the classic interview narrative arcs of “things I’d done and achieved”.
Always within that tightrope-cordoned zone of “just enough to prove I’m good, but not so good that the interviewer feels threatened”.
I began cooking again, working out, being a very good housewife.
My dog got long walks. My husband got multi-course lunches. No one was unhappy.
I began looking really forward to about heading back to the safety of a full-time role somewhere.
I know how to be a 9-5 worker.
I know how to perform at my level and to bring others up to their level.
I know how to document everything.
I know how to be friendly and un-threatening.
I know I am a better product leader for all I have learned this year on the front lines.
Then as I was packing up one evening, someone came knocking at my door.
The feeling was hard to explain but it felt a bit like this.
The right person, at the right time, changes everything
If you’re read this far, you’ll correctly intuit that things have changed again.
And that is why somehow, two and a half weeks after meeting her, I have slid myself back into the founder seat.
v0 in the first 9 months has ended. But so has recruiting. The job applications and LinkedIn updates sit on the sideboard. And I have decided that for now, that’s where they’re going to stay as I pursue v1.
In this transition space I’d like to pause and reflect a bit on the experience traversing between v0 and v1.
On resourcing-based forks in the road
This is a vulnerable post. I wanted to write about this because I wanted to add my small voice to the big, chest pumping “founder mode” and "cerebral valley” posts that I don’t think reflect founder reality.
From the outside, you’d think that everyone is brash, believes 1000% in their abilities and is constantly closing.
Actually, most early-stage founders are straddling their surfboards, bobbing somewhere between terror and resignation, waiting for their wave, waiting for their shot, checking their back accounts.
It may be a customer, a cofounder, a check - anything. They are trying their utmost to keep it alive.
We live in a world of limited resources. You do not have all the skills you need. How could you unless you have literally done this before? And if you’re not a trust fund kid, you only have so many shots on goal.
My controversial opinion is - if you run out of resources, sometimes, the best thing is to pack up.
There is seasonality to life. So much of a startup is luck. Whether you call it divine timing or something else, wind direction matters - and there’s sometimes nothing you can do about it.
I’m a big believer in people guiltlessly arming themselves with the resources they need to succeed.
We often think this is just financial but it’s also emotional and social.
I don’t like seeing founders ridden by guilt because they think they have to “power through”.
If it’s not working, read the signs! Give up quickly (and pivot, or not!)
You don’t owe anyone anything until you raise money.
Once you do, you have obligations. Til you do, guard your freedom.
… but also, letting go, and letting life surprise you
OK, this is the extra vulnerable part. It was around a month ago I started letting go.
Letting go or having faith or whatever you call it is not very intuitive for me. But wind direction was off, I was still recovering from a very intense and physically grueling summer, and I figured why not ask for your dream cofounder and see if they show up?
At dinner with friends I would tell them with complete non-attachment that a person with XYZ traits was my dream cofounder, and to please help me keep a look out, because I really needed a person like this to succeed. Why not?
3/5 founders + 2/5 early engineers + not pictured: birthday boy (also a founder) - it takes a village
And every single time I made these declarations / requests people would scrunch their faces up and say “that is really, impossibly niche. OK I’ll look. But I don’t think that’s going to happen. And I think you need to lower your standards”.
I would feel a little annoyed / embarrassed every time someone said this but also defiant. Why not? I said these things into the world without really believing it could happen.
To be clear, a couple weeks later, when that person found me instead, she didn’t come to spec. But the core of what I’d asked for was thoroughly intact. And I literally could not have dreamed up or even known to “manifest” a better match.
At the risk of sounding too spiritual, I’m quietly convinced that what may have made the difference was letting go.
On keeping your standards high
In my own experience, one of the most magical things about finding a truly “right person” is that tender, quiet, full-bodied spark you feel when you don’t have to make any excuses or lie to yourself about them being right for you.
If you had told me a few months ago that this was even possible, I would not have believed it, because I had never experienced it before. Maybe a person’s standards will always be low until you find someone who helps you raise them. But it is so worth it.
I’m saying all this because if you’re a founder - and you are lonely, and you are desperate for companionship before you go absolutely insane - even so, if you can, please keep your standards high. It sounds crazy, but I would now rather be laughed out of the room for idealism and blind faith than have missed out on the profoundness of a “meant to be”. If anyone has questions about this I’d be happy to share more 1:1.
On keeping your standards high
I’m writing all of this not even knowing how any of this will pan out in even a week or a month - which is I think the power of the timing of this post.
This isn’t a “now that I’ve safely succeeded I can safely say from my perch, “well back in the early days, this happened, how funny””. This is unfolding pretty much live. And tomorrow, we’re waking up to a new president.
But v1 Laura is different from v0 Laura. And it’s not just that she’s better positioned to think about CaC.
The difference is that I’ve decided that I’m going to let go of control - let my life bear witness to whatever happens, see where I end up - and commit to awe.
-
This is my first more personal post on lauralee.me. I am committed to being human-first. Thanks for reading.
