Founders: When did you know it was time?
Today was my official last day at the company where I spent the past 7+ years.
It's a strange feeling.
For the past several months, I've been building my startup before work, after work, on weekends, and pretty much every spare moment in between. Today was the day I finally made the leap and officially became a full-time founder.
It's exciting... and honestly, a little surreal.
For those of you who've made this transition:
When did you know it was time?
Were you terrified, excited, or both?
Looking back, is there anything you wish you'd done before taking the leap?
And for those still building nights and weekends, what's the biggest thing holding you back from going full time?
I'd love to hear everyone's stories. Becoming a founder feels like joining a club where everyone has a different path, and I think there's a lot we can all learn from each other.
Replies
congrats on making the jump. from the pivot side rather than the leaving-a-job side (moved from one startup to co-founding/CTO-ing another), the thing that made it feel like "time" wasn't confidence, it was that staying half-in was actively worse than going all-in. nights-and-weekends works for validating an idea, but once you actually need momentum, the split attention becomes the bottleneck, not your skills or the market. the thing I'd tell earlier-me: line up 2-3 months of runway clarity before the leap, not because you need certainty, but because financial anxiety is a genuinely bad co-pilot for the first few months of hard decisions
@galdayan I definitely felt that. I am thankful for the runway opportunity we have.
@galdayan "financial anxiety is genuinely a bad co-pilot" -- such a great comment (and so true!)