Reflections on start-up life: Week Six

This last week was a very quiet one as we decided to take a break for a few days. Having gone straight from PwC to BinaryPlex, I needed the down time and Christmas is as good as any to do it.

It’s strange though how different it feels on your own. The thought of the next challenge is never quite out of your mind. We agreed to come back and start work from this Monday which only yesterday someone pointed out to me was a public holiday — the thought never even occured. When you work from home, time is generally divided between “working” and “not working” — things like a public holiday seem almost obscure when it’s just the two of us anyway.

We launched http://twendly.com to the world on Monday with a goal of 30 sign-ups by this Monday, which we achieved by Christmas Day. It feels good to have finally shared what we are doing with the world, even though it’s still a small part of the overall vision.

Other than that, a quiet and family focussed week. It does however feel like we’ve crossed some bridge — we are now into our 6 month count-down proper, the time window to explore and find the “right” thing is closing — we need to focus pretty quickly on one thing and do it. The challenge of course, everyone is away on leave so the opportunity to get feedback is extremely limited to non-existent, especially this week coming up between Christmas and New Year where in Australia at least, everything shuts down.

We’ve also continued to talk to people and each other (yes, even over our “holiday!). I’ve decided that startup life is clearly related to physics:

• For every opinion there is an equal and opposite opinion.
• If something makes you feel up, there will be someone who can make you feel down about it (and vice versa).
• You might feel like you’re working at the speed of light — that just means that everyone got old and died on the idea (perhaps metaphorically) while you were busy shooting off around the place.

Having taken a break has been very good for one thing — if you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Having built an engine, we’ve been treating a lot of problems like a nail lately and with some distance it’s been good to question this approach — we want to be sure that we are focussed on the problems for which we are the right tool for the job (or alternatively build a different tool perhaps).

Wishing everyone that is reading this blog, and especially those who’ve taken the time to comment and provide support a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!