1. Life will never be the same
I’ll begin with the hard truth: you are a social outcast. You will be one for the coming months or even years. It’s important to start by recognising that you are on a different path from others.
2. Discipline and managing a workday
Let’s face the second truth: humans are animals of structure, and to some extent, we all need to be managed by tasks (top CEOs have it worse; they’re managed by a calendar curated by someone they manage, but I digress)
Bonus: find your own coping mechanism, and allow yourself to feel unproductive
3. Inner circle & mentorship
By this stage of your entrepreneurial journey, you would have found the value of keeping a smaller circle of loving critics, as opposed to being the social butterfly you once were. I recommend splitting this inner circle into three categories:
- ‘Work friends’ – those who’re in the same space/intent as you – to keep in the know of your business
- Friends – schoolmates, childhood buddies, etc. who are supportive of your venture. Those always telling you to ‘get a job’ should be out of your life as much as possible.
- Mentors/Advisors – formal or semi-formal – I keep to 3 formal, and about 5-10 semi-formal. Semi-formal mentors
Lastly, give back to the community and thank your mentors by mentoring, say, 2 to 3 juniors on a regular basis! At pre-seed you might not be qualified to guide them on working on a startup, so you might want to choose those who are still in the exploration stages of their career / startup journey.
4. Making every (social) meetup a pitch
An inner circle is as valuable as the depth of conversations and catchups (and by some extension, its frequency) associated with it. It is definitely worth the time to meet with your friends who keep you going and absorb all the positive energy from them.
How then do you make such meetups productive? You pitch, of course. You don’t go in with a pitch deck, of course. At pre-seed, when I’m still validating problem statements
You get one of three responses:
- Awesome buddies who give you 10 pats on the back each and say they love you regardless what you do. Thumbs up!
- Even more awesome buddies who test your product, point out the flaws, and tell you why they’re not converting.
- White noise bashing you, but by this time the inner circle should be free of these. If they’re still around, eliminate them and their generator.
5. Your life is yours
The last thing you’d want to remember is that you owe nobody an explanation on what you’re doing. People may critique, give suggestions, and everything in between, but you owe no one any explanation.
Life’s also too short to get embroiled in being tactful to those who want to control your life out of some egoistic behaviour. A friend who’s an ex-founder might want to check-in and keep you in check, sure. But you need to just tell them off when they start saying things like:
- Man, you should be working your ass off 12 hours a day! Why is your girlfriend asking for a date?
- You didn’t come for the networking session today? Where the hell were you! You’ve missed a whole bunch of investors man!
We’re all adults, and we all make our own decisions. Wrapping this up by reiterating point #1: life will never be the same.
To be more precise here, life is never the same (for two different people). Consciously make those choices, and take full responsibility for them.
Koh Kang Liang 