Startup Series: Losing and regaining one’s mojo as a founder

By Shefaly Yogendra

The journey of a founder can be exhausting. Those in solid founder teams too don't just have a collective experience; they also have their own, personal experiences of the founding journey. It is not always easy to be in sync with others on the team, or their level of focus or motivation. Decisions are not always easy to make or consensual. Role cleavage is not simple or trivial, and yet without it, things may start to slow down. Given all this, it shouldn't surprise us to know that founders often lose their mojo.

An entrepreneur I advise has had several such phases through the years. Helping him work through them has been a lesson in human resilience and the purposiveness that drives founders. Crucially, he has come out of each such phase with renewed vigour and focus. That should give hope to other founders in the same situation.

Building a venture is hard work but also strangely exhilarating. Even the tiredness is satisfying because you know you are building your dream and you cannot wait for the morning to come so another day could dawn and you get on with it. Intrinsically rewarding activities can be quite motivating for founders and others.

But what happens when you start finding all that work fills you with negative feelings instead of the exhilaration you expect? It is time to ask tough questions, to answer them honestly and to take appropriate action.

One of the more business-related, less soul-searching type, questions to ask is about founder-product or founder-market fit, which is more crucial than product-market fit to the success of a startup, especially for first time founders. This fit could come from the founder’s or founders’ core values, or their commitment to a cause, or their deep interest in the product category. Is it a lack of this fit that is dragging on you? If so, what can you do to change that?

It is also worth thinking about the specific things about your work that take the wind out of your sails and the things that energise you. The founder I mentioned earlier found the CEO responsibilities difficult to balance with the creative aspect of the work he wanted to do. There were also other activities that needed developing and executing but neither did he enjoy doing those nor were they the best use of his time or skills. With some introspection, he identified the need to expand his team to bring in skills that he did not have, and the skills that could be hired in and scaled without needing him to be involved in managing. He also realised he had to get really good at planning and time management so he could fulfill both the roles he wanted to.

Crucially, it is worth delving deeper. If the venture does not really excite you as much as you anticipated at the very beginning, why are you still here, working your socks off? Is it your ego at work? Do you feel beholden to commitments made to others? Do you fear failure? Is it a sense of deontology at work? Are you indulging in sunk cost fallacy? Something else?

The founder I mentioned earlier has an overarching commitment to practising and defending certain values with vigour. When he has bad days, we talk over the issues separating the operational niggles from the strategic challenges. The exercise helps him not be overwhelmed and instead focus back with renewed vigour on what matters most to him and the startup.

Last but not the least, building a startup venture is like any long term relationship. There will be good days and there will be bad days. Good days are easy, uplifting, energising. However if you cannot hack the bad days, the relationship will feel toxic and draining. But if the bad days are too numerous and frequent, and overwhelm the good days, it may be advisable to consider quitting altogether.

What happens next? Most people who quit a really bad relationship don't "fall in love again" without a shed load of hard work either by themselves or in therapy. Founders who quit because the bad overwhelms the good may need some time with themselves to understand how to avoid the same fate the next time around.

Knowing what sort of person you are is a good and essential first step.