Are You Solving Problems You Don’t Have?
FreshBooks was founded by me and Joe in January 2003. We built the service in our spare time over the the course of about 14 months while holding down our day jobs. Those days were so exciting – they were some of the most inspired, impassioned and tumultuous days of my life.
Yesterday I spoke with an entrepreneur who is living those kind of days himself. He is seeking financing for his web app. In speaking with him I was reminded of those days…So many ideas, so many directions we could take things and so many directions things could go. I still feel this way, but I’ve learned some lessons that make the ride smoother.
One of the most important lessons I’ve learned (for my mental health if nothing else) is to ask myself, “Is this really a problem?” when an issue pops into my head. If you possess an entrepreneur’s mind, or you are part visionary, it’s really easy to envision problems that are coming down the road. This is important and it’s a strength…except when you are just getting started. When you are getting started you don’t have any problems. You think you do, but you just don’t.
I remember spending time and energy trying to mitigate problems of scale when building the first version of FreshBooks. I spent a lot of energy on “What ifs?” That was a mistake. Instead my whole focus should have been getting the product to look and work wonderfully, building a team and growing a group of people to use my product once it was released.
As time goes on it’s important to spend more and more of your time managing potential risks, but I still ask myself, “Is this really a problem?” My role has changed – and so it should – so that one of my key functions now is to foresee risks and prepare for them. Even if no action is taken today we have an understanding of what the risks are, their timelines and their scope. I’ve learned that if we just keep our heads down and keep doing what we are doing well, things will take care of themselves, but as you grow there is less and less of an excuse to work in a vacuum.
So, for anyone who is moonlighting and building a business – or just getting a business off the ground – don’t spend energy on the what ifs. Focus all your energy on what you can control and keep your feet moving…it’s a wonderful period in an entrepreneur’s life and it should be enjoyed as such.
Copyright © 2000-2010
9:10 am
Great bit of advice. I don’t know how many times in developing an app that I catch myself doing the “what if” thing, and getting off course from what my original goal was.
I am curious to know how much of a role that Joe played in helping you stay focused in the early days of Freshbooks? I know once I added a second member to my team, they have been very instrumental in helping keep my focus more balanced.
10:43 am
There was not a time before Joe so I can’t really say. As for keeping me focused/balanced, Joe was and continues to be a great foil for me…he tends to come at things from the opposite direction and the diversity in perspective is really valuable. He’s also into keeping everything as simple as can be which is always nice because sometimes I can complicate things. Perhaps the biggest thing we did for eachother in the early days was provide support for one another. It can be pretty isolating being fully of passion for a product that no one has ever seen. Friends, family, etc don’t really get it and might think you’ve gone mad when they catch a wiff of your enthusiasm. Not being alone in the headspace is comforting, and Joe and I are both pretty positive individuals so we could prop the other one up if one of us was having a tough day…I guess that’s balance.
7:25 pm
This sounds strangely familiar … Oh yeah, I’m going through the same problems myself.
I won’t spam the link in this comment body, but I’ll say I’m dealing with the same sort of issues myself. “How do I get money to finance the application?” “How do I draw users and keep them using my application?” “Is this application going to solve what it was built to solve?”
I’m still struggling with the first two, but I can definitely say that my application is going well above what I thought it could do, particularly in such a short period of about 7 months. It has been a wild ride, and the ideas keep on coming from users and staff. You are right about the family thinking you are crazy. Explaining it to my parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, they all think I’m a little cuckoo.
I do have to disagree with you on the “what if” questions though. At least in some things. Asking “what if I haven’t optimized this set of queries?” will probably get you looking to proper SQL optimization. Asking “what if a user can do xyz with my API?” will probably get you looking at proper security techniques. Though I’d guess this isn’t what you were talking about, but more of “What if my application fails?” and those questions will get you pulling your hair out and finding yourself staring at your code editor and not doing anything.
I’ve learned a lot the past several months since the launch of my application, and applying that knowledge has significantly helped. Now if I can just working on some of the other issues …