Three things no one tells you about building a startup

People tell you building a startup is hard. That part is true, and it is not very useful. What nobody tells you is which parts are hard, and how they feel from the inside. These are three I learned building Bloccpay, plus a few smaller ones I keep close.

1. You are the team before you have one

Nobody prepares you for this. In the same day you are writing the code, designing the architecture, reviewing DevOps, onboarding engineers and jumping on investor calls. There is no handoff, and there is no “that’s not my department.” It is all your department.

You have to be okay with that, or it will overwhelm you. Being okay with it does not mean doing all of it perfectly. It means accepting that every part of the company is yours to notice, even the parts you will hand to someone else later.

2. You have to learn to ask for help

This one is hard when you have been doing everything yourself. You get used to figuring things out alone, and it starts to feel like weakness to say “I don’t know” or “I can’t carry this.”

The moment I started being honest about what I needed, things started moving faster. Nobody tells you that letting go of control is how you scale. The work does not get smaller when you hold on to it. It just waits for you.

3. Ship it

Perfection will kill your startup. The thing you put out and feel a little embarrassed about is the thing that gets you your first users.

The first time someone used Bloccpay to pay a contractor and it just worked, that mattered more than any feature I was still tweaking in my head. Done beats perfect, every single time. You can improve something people are using. You cannot learn anything from something that only exists in your head.

A few more I keep close

Patience. Growth is slower than the stories make it sound. In a 2015 talk at Stanford, John Collison said that when Stripe launched, two years after he and Patrick started on it, it had about 50 users. Two years for fifty users, and Stripe was a good idea. Slow does not always mean wrong.

Do the hard things. The hard task you keep moving to tomorrow is usually the one that matters most. It does not get easier by waiting.

Put yourself in spaces where you can learn. Programmes, communities and rooms full of people further along than you. You cannot learn everything by building alone.

Stay close to your community. Staying connected to the people I build for is also what has kept me motivated to build.

Yakubu, manage. Some days it will feel like it is too much, like it might break you. You manage. You rest, and then you keep going.