Ryan Rutan: Welcome back to another episode of the Startup Therapy podcast. This is Ryan Routan joined as always by my friend, the founder and CEO of Startups.com, Will Schroeder. Will, this is going to be an interesting one, because this is a topic that has been sitting in our queue on our desk for some time now, which is unusual for us because normally we come up with the topic we're like, let's tackle that right away. But this is one where we don't yet have a fully definitive answer to, so we're gonna chase it today. And we're gonna see if we can finish this thing off, put a bow on it, you know, we're wanna dig in today and and really discuss who works for whom around here, right? Does the founder work for the startup or does the founder, or does the startup work for the founder? And the answer is, uh, why can't it be both?
Wil Schroter: I struggled with this one. I've been sitting with this topic for like 3 years. Yep. For 3 years, and I hate to make this political, but, but this is actually, it was the, the, the recent election in the run up to the election in the US that was that that's been sparking it made me think about it more recently and they were and I think we're talking about this in another episode. The argument kept being that all these people, uh, these rich people made their money on the backs of their employees, and I kept thinking. I, I don't think that's true, and I, I get, I, I, I don't want to get into the politics of it because that's that's not my, the point of this, but I started thinking about it like, well, wait a minute, well, who's working for who? I'm like, are those people working for the founder or is the founder working for them? Because it kind of makes it sound like the the the founder is working for them, like the founder owes them, and I'm like, well is it isn't that what a paychecks for and and again, but it really started making me think like. Who is working for who? Yeah, right? And what does that look like? And then I started thinking in terms of, well, boy, I know an awful lot of founders, and if you ask them who's working for who are they working for the startup or is the startup working for them? They're not gonna tell you that the startup's working for them. Yeah, I
Ryan Rutan: was very very rare, like, it's interesting, I don't know a lot of founders that would, that would be able to say that, even if they did, I'd be like, sure, I, I can think of a few who probably would say that because they want it to be true, but that I think the vast majority of them, it would be, would be false. Now I think you and I both know some entrepreneurs. We both know some some business people who maybe at this stage in their career, their business is largely working for them, but nobody that I would call a pure startup founder number one, cause we do draw that distinction between, like, you know, the accounting consultancy being an entrepreneur and, and, you know, say a tech product to solve for some new AI thing as being a startup, and n that you shall meet, but man, yeah, I don't know too many who I could I could truly say now, again, we do know some that have had big financial outcomes, but that's not necessarily. The startup working for the founder either, right? And and that's that's a moment in time kind of thing, like, OK, well what happened up until that point, right? Was that just the one momentous event where it's easy to point to and go, OK, well, now clearly the starter is working for you, it just put $200 million in your bank account. Cool. But that's so rare. 99.999% of people.
Wil Schroter: That's what I'm saying. Also, when you started this business as the founder. You didn't start it to say, how can I find a business where I work for everyone else's paycheck, right? No one was that altruistic. No one was like, you don't be really cool. I want to quit my job and go start something where I stay awake till 3 in the morning at all times, and mortgage myself silly to make sure everyone else gets a paychecks.
Ryan Rutan: I'm gonna reverse Tom Sawyer this shit. I'm gonna reverse Tom Sawyer this thing. I'm gonna do all the work and they're gonna get me out. Yeah, no, I, I don't
Wil Schroter: think I'm right mind would do that. And yet all of these founders find themselves in a position where they're like, I worked to make sure everyone else gets paid, and they're like, how did I get here? What the hell happened? And so, again, I, I got into this, this weird like thought process, like how many founders are out there? How many founders listening right now that are thinking to themselves, wait a minute, who works for who right here? Because like in theory, in theory, I mean, you know, the old school version we're like, we're like operator has a factory and factory workers work for operator, right? And you know, old man operator has so widget,
Ryan Rutan: yeah, right.
Wil Schroter: One of my favorite shows to watch, uh, with my family, particularly my daughter, um, is, uh, the, the, the men, the men that built America, she hates that built America, right, but
Ryan Rutan: that does leave out quite a few people.
Wil Schroter: It's pretty specific, right? Um, but there's these great, very, very fictionalized accounts of all these great industrialists that that built America and it's exactly that, right? It's the Carnegies
Ryan Rutan: and ham fisted robber barons,
Wil Schroter: exactly, it's exactly that, and, and, and that is what people picture when they talk about like the people that don't pay their taxes, and it's like, it's almost like this like fiefdom, right? And there's these serfs that work for like. fe s ted person who's like forcing them to to work in like the mines for like 18 hours a day, right?
Ryan Rutan: It helps if you put in a monocle. I've heard it, it, it, it tells the story
Wil Schroter: what it is, right? Everybody's the monopoly man, right? It is, and then I'm like, my God, it is nothing less.
Ryan Rutan: It is
Wil Schroter: such
Ryan Rutan: a
Wil Schroter: caricature of a bygone era. And what I picture is whatever the polar opposite of that is how a founder in this day and age is. Actually working and that person is broke and their parents are paying their bills, and they are so stressed and so anxious and so over a barrel, and the person they are working for, the founders working for, are their investors, their debt holders, their employees, their customers, they're like, no one works for me. They don't think about that at all. And that's interesting.
Ryan Rutan: How
Wil Schroter: did I get here?
Ryan Rutan: I, I think at the, I think at the early stages there's a contract that we accept, right? It's, it goes back to these like, these, these things that we assume will be short-lived or that there there is a life cycle that it'll go through and then things will change at some point. And unfortunately, I think so often in in founder space we we permanentize things, right, we we accidentally write shit in stone because I think at the beginning like we all get it, like, OK, there are no employees, right? You are CEO, chief, cook, bottle washer, floors, everything you do it, you do it front to back. The impression is that over time, I will bring in people who will do those things, and eventually I'll do less, they'll do more, and then I'll go from working for the startup and then the startup starts working for me. There's some truth to that, there's some truth to that, but I think that it implies that we're also replacing things that we were doing, like, let's be realistic about that. When was the last time you remember replacing something that you do? Now, we hire people. But generally speaking, it's not to replace the things that we're doing, it's to do things that we weren't doing, right? It's like, uh, well, I'm, I'm, I've I've concepted this thing and I've done some, some sketches of it, but I, I can't actually design it. I can't actually code it, so now I need a designer. And a coder, right? Those are things that I wasn't going to do. So a lot of that is, you know, the expansion and like the the the team that we end up working for or or that ends up working for us, depending on where we land with this, is largely just additive in nature. And so there isn't really this transition that I think we all assume will be there. It's like, yeah, I gotta grind it out from the beginning and then at some point it'll start to work for me. Well, Someday never comes, right? And I think that's what unless, unless we specifically plan towards that point, and I, I would argue that most of us don't, or, or
Wil Schroter: never, never get the luxury, right? Yeah,
Ryan Rutan: I guess that's more what I mean. It's like not that we don't plan for it, but like, that plan can't really be made from the beginning anyway, so like, and then at this point of net revenue, we'll do this. Well, OK, what all went into that net revenue? Well, I have no idea yet. OK, well then how are you planning for that point? I'm not really.
Wil Schroter: Let's take this in two sections, OK? Let's take section 1. What was the initial plan? How was it supposed to work for the founder? What was that contract we wrote for ourselves or, you know, our intent? The second part was what happened where it became some other contract? At what point did the founder work for the startup and how did we get there? And then let's compare the two and see what the hell happened. Sure, OK. Yeah. All right, so, so let's start with with what the initial contract was, OK? Because that's before it got perverted. That's before, you know, life happened, OK? Here's what I think the contract was, at least this is what it was in the 9 times that I started a company. When I first started, every time, and I'm guessing this is what it was for other people, you tell me yours, Ryan. It was, I want to build something that will profit me. Profit means a lot. lot of things, you know, I'll I'll I'll use the most obvious money. I want to build something that will make me more money than I could have otherwise made doing something else. Now, that's not entirely true because truth be told, there are other things in different versions of my life that maybe I could have done, that maybe would have made me more money, but I was able to, I was willing to forego some of that for some of the better lifestyle choices, which is also part of the profit I think about that being my own boss. Would give,
Ryan Rutan: I think that's one of the and I think that's an important piece of this is that sometimes we have to kind of reframe what that contract really looks like and what we're talking about when when we're saying it's working for us and I, well, in what ways is it working for you, right? Like financially, rarely at the beginning, especially it's usually the opposite. It's a financial disaster to start and so I think that is. That's an important aspect of it. I'm not sure how we will account for all of that stuff because that's, that's gonna vary person to person, right? There, there are gonna be some people out there just like, I had 4 bad bosses in a row. I just, PTSD will not allow me to walk back in. I can't do it. I can't do it.
Wil Schroter: So stick with that one. I love that one. I love that one. I want to be my own boss. Let's stick with that because, you know, in a minute we're gonna go take out an investor and that goes right out the door. OK, I want to make my own decisions. In a minute we're gonna take a co-founder and that goes right out the door. And employees and customers, we did a whole episode on this, right? Um, control goes away very, very easy control goes away, right? But this contract that that we're mentally writing to ourselves about who we want to work for, how we want the startup to work for us, felt pretty explicit. We clearly made the sacrifice with this implied contract in mind. At no point did someone come to us and say, now you understand this all goes away. And we said, yep, totally. I'm totally cool with that. I no longer want this profit to go to me. At no point did we say that.
Ryan Rutan: And yet, Yeah, yeah, right, that's the way it works. This is the problem with contracts you signed to yourself, from yourself, by yourself,
Wil Schroter: right, right by yourself. Well said, well said. And, OK, cool. So, right, um, now, at that point in our minds, we say this company is supposed to serve my goals, yet we fast forward some period 5, 10 years later, whatever it's gonna be, and it does not, right? It is, it is ruining our health. It made us broke. Everyone tells us to go up ourselves, right?
Ryan Rutan: What? Right, yeah. Right, I just reread the contract. It doesn't say any of that. It really does. I just reread all right, all 6 of my contracts, none of them said that,
Wil Schroter: yeah. Ryan, go back your inventory. You're thinking about when you, when you started your first companies, what were your goals? How was the how was the startup supposed to work for you?
Ryan Rutan: So I, I'll skip over like some of the super early entrepreneurial things cause those were really just like cutting teeth, uh trying to figure out like, can I have any kind of an idea and make some money off of it, and that was really all it was. I was also 14, so, you know, I had a lot.
Wil Schroter: And you,
Ryan Rutan: yeah, so when, when we go back in time, it really did have a lot to do with two things in, in, in my case. One, the opportunity of what it would provide me, of course, but the idea that I could go and chase something that nobody else had done or hadn't done quite like I wanted to, yeah, right? Like the, the Competitive aspect of it to some degree was a big part of my contract, which is like nobody else has figured this shit out yet. Let's go figure it out, right? Or nobody's doing this quite in the way that I want to, let's let's go do that. That was a big part of the contract for me was the excitement of being able to define for better, for worse, for right or for wrong. How things would happen, right? To the extent that you, you could, and, and of course at the earliest stage when it's still just an idea, you do have that full flexibility, right? Like it was as I defined it. Now it very quickly changed after that, like the minute I had first client, first employee, first everything, uh we'll get to that in a second. Yeah, we'll get there, yeah, yeah. So that was it for me like when I go back and it was like when I considered the, the options, right? And I do, I remember some of these like really, really super clearly. Right, there was a scholarship to to Leeds for an MBA was one of the decision, uh, it was one of the branches on my decision tree at the time, or I could go to Taiwan and help these three entrepreneurial companies try to market onto US shelves and get acquired by ACEs. OK, guess which one I did, right? I did not do the Leeds NBA right? because it was something nobody had done before. It was, it was more entrepreneurial. I was gonna go and get to lead this team of people and, and try to build out this this marketing effort and and launch these companies and then try to sell to Aus, which we did with two of them. It was super cool, right? That was it, right? So it was these really specific situations where I was balancing kind of like there's obvious commercial value in this other thing I could go do, right? Like having an MBA from You know, a well well-known university in in the UK would have been a good thing, good networking, expand my, my network internationally, and yet, right, and here's the thing, this is where this kind of gets crazy, this is why I'm spending as much time on this as I am. That was a very clearly defined contract. That was the contract I understood. I signed the paper, I give up two years of my life, they give me a bunch of money, and I get a network, I get some some credentials behind my name. I can go ask for a higher salary, all that stuff. Yeah, pretty well defined, right? It's a lot of people do this every year, right? So there's no question about what comes out of an NBA in most cases, right, within, within some limits. And instead, I chose the path of absolute full uncertainty. Because of the promise of a few of these things that are baked into the contract like you described, right, like autonomy, self, self-driven, uh, you know, being able to make this part of my identity and and build what I wanted to build in the way that I wanted to build it. And yet, right, again that that contract is so short-lived that it's hysterical that we even weigh them with any kind of commensurate value, let alone that's the contract that won out in my case, like why do we do this?
Wil Schroter: You know, something that's really funny about everything we talk about here is that none of it is new. Everything you're dealing with right now has been done 1000 times before you, which means the answer already exists, you may just not know it, but that's OK. That's kind of what we're here to do. We talk about this stuff on the show, but we actually solve these problems all day long at groups.startups.com. So if any of this sounds familiar, stop guessing about what to do. Let us just give you the answers to the test and be done with it. So we set out for these goals and and we expected a reward. I expect a reward. OK, let's pause there. Let's talk about the other side of it, where all of a sudden a few things happened, where all of a sudden the startup said, no, no, no, hold on a sec, you need to work for us. Yeah, OK, let's talk about how that happened, right? How it happened to all of us. And, and more, more specifically, we let it happen, not we let it happen, we wanted it to happen. We did it for the right reasons, OK? But those reasons changed the dynamic, and in some cases directly, directly impacted our ability to be the ones who had the startup working for us. So let's go with the most obvious ones. We took out an investor. The moment we took on an investor, we hired a new boss. We just said. I now work for that person.
Ryan Rutan: I will make you more money with your money.
Wil Schroter: Now that wasn't what we were thinking. No one says, hey, let me go find a new boss. But that's exactly what we did. And and anyone that doesn't think that is out of their mind. The only people that don't think they haven't had an investor yet,
Ryan Rutan: right?
Wil Schroter: No one who's had a big enough investor, and they'll tell you, that's your new boss,
Ryan Rutan: that's right, right.
Wil Schroter: And so the moment we did that, we said, look, I now have to satisfy this other person. And again, if you haven't taken an investors before, you just don't understand the liability yet. However, it's not just them. The moment you hired somebody, you created your first liability. You had to make payroll, you had to make them happy, you had to cater to their needs, and all of a sudden you had to do this new thing. You had to worry about their welfare. Now that's part of your job as an employer, right? Just like if you have a kid, right, you have to worry about their welfare, but hold on. At the expense of yours. You didn't think about that
Ryan Rutan: zero sum to that game at some point, right? Like there isn't a magic bucket of money that it comes out of,
Wil Schroter: uh, right, right, so have you ever paid somebody at the expense of your own pay?
Ryan Rutan: Yeah. Yes,
Wil Schroter: over and over and over again, yeah, that moment where you're like, wait. Which just happened,
Ryan Rutan: yeah, yeah, which just happened, right? But particularly, man, oh God, I, I, I remember it. I remember it so crystal clear, because we had won a new contract, the amount coming in from the contract looked like it would be enough to make up for a couple months of back pay for me. Right, that I had foregone to to be able to augment the team in order to win this new bigger contract, and then cost started to overrun, and we need to bring on another person, and another person, and another person, and next thing you know, that back salary that I caught up, I gave it to myself, and then I had to give it back. Somehow that was even more painful. It was like, in order to make the next payroll, I had to pay some of the back salary that I had recompensated myself for. I had to put back into the company to make to make the following payroll and was just like, not only did I wait for that money, I waited for it, then I got it, then I had to give it to somebody else. Yep. Look, it all worked out. Damn, was that not part of the what I thought I had signed up for, right? That was, that was not it, it's it's it's so crazy is that so many times like, again, we make these deals, we make the contract with the, but this will change over time. And with the assumption that once it changes for the better, it will never change in the other direction. That was one of those moments in time where I was like, OK, we, we surpassed the point where I couldn't pay myself the salary anymore, and then I paid myself the salary, and then I realized, nope, we didn't actually beat that boss yet. We, we still, the, the piper still wants his due.
Wil Schroter: It's a couple things. It's that moment when when you pay someone else at your expense, meaning at the expense of you getting paid, you know, and you realize, wait a minute. That person doesn't work for me. I work for them. That's that's how that works, right? Like, at which point they get paid at your expense, at the expense of you losing. They don't work for you, you work for them, right? Like the first time I experienced that. Concept was at such a low dollar figure, ones of thousands of dollars, but it might as well have been a billion dollars because it was all the money in the world.
Ryan Rutan: It was, it was the balance of my checking account at that time,
Wil Schroter: right? And, and, and for me, it happened at a point where I had to make payroll by taking out a first USA credit card, right? I mean, First, I didn't know if first USA as a bank even exists anymore to like to give you an idea.
Ryan Rutan: I think so. Do you still have the t-shirt they gave you for signing up for the card?
Wil Schroter: That's right, yeah, yeah. I'm still fit. But think about this, like, I, I had to take out a credit card for money I obviously didn't have and like transfer money to like get it into a cash format. That I could give to somebody. And so my only thought at the time was that I owed this person ones of thousands of dollars, which might as well have been ones of hundreds of thousands of dollars when
Ryan Rutan: I
Wil Schroter: was in it. They don't have it, right? And it was a lot of money relative to how much money I had, and, and so I could pay that person. The only thought at the time was I have to pay this person. It didn't even occur to me. That I couldn't pay this person. This isn't a matter of dishonesty. I'm just saying like in terms of payment, it didn't occur to me that if you owed somebody money that it couldn't be paid.
Ryan Rutan: Just, yeah, you just don't pay like, oh well, I can do that. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Wil Schroter: again I for long
Ryan Rutan: and you shouldn't do it all.
Wil Schroter: It's not that if it occurred to me, I wouldn't have paid it. It's just that it didn't occur to me you couldn't. So, so I paid the person the money and now I had like a few $1000 of a balance on this credit card. Now, a couple things to note at at that this moment because this is all relevant. At that moment, I'm I'm looking at like this is back in the days of like 28% APR or whatever it was. I'm thinking it'll probably take me like 3 to 4 years to pay this off. Snapshot that for a second. That person got a few $1000 that they probably spent by the end of the month. It's going to take me years. To repay that with interest, thousands of dollars more, right? Again, I want to stick with this, OK? If ever. Now, on top of that, right, that's not money I made, that's money I lost, right, right? So, so again, I'm, I'm not paying this out of profit. I'm paying this out of loss, right? On top of that, I also didn't make money, right? So not only did I lose money, then I have to pay interest on top of the money that I
Ryan Rutan: lost money. I don't have money and I'm currently not replacing at at at any kind of rate, right? Yeah, OK,
Wil Schroter: God, so stick with that. Now, immediately. Someone's gonna look at that situation and say, well, you got into a business, so you should know that, right? er sympathy. Not looking for sympathy. All I'm trying to say is,
Ryan Rutan: yeah.
Wil Schroter: When the founder gets fed, everyone is like, ah, well, you should have known founder, right? F youlip that around, flip that around. The founder makes $3000 right? And they're like, yeah, well, you owes people money, right? You know, you made that on the back of your employees. What the hell? Yeah. Yeah, come on, man. Like how does that work?
Ryan Rutan: Right? That is at the crux of this entire thing, isn't it? I mean, which is that we're in these non-negotiable positions in so many cases where it's like, well, we're the only room for negotiation, let's put it that way, like, we're the flexibility in the situation, we're the ones who are willing to sacrifice, where other people won't. And the idea is, because it's for the upside, because it's for the flexibility, because it's the the contract with all that stuff, and like, yeah, eventually we will, we will benefit from it, hopefully. But again, at the time we make the deal, that's that's not what we, that's not how we think about or how it looks, but at some point like there aren't employees who are just like, well yeah, you know what, I'll just, you you've done this for a couple of years without a salary. I'll do it this year, my turn.
Wil Schroter: Right, I, I, I've never had somebody go, hey Will, I heard you lost a whole bunch of money. I'm gonna wire you something to make make you whole. Yeah, yeah, I got you I got you, buddy. I, I, I've never heard a founder ever, ever, ever be like, oh my God, and the coolest thing, you know, it was really down our luck, you know, after the company folded, a lot of our employees chipped in and made sure we made our mortgage payment. Yeah, no one ever, right? I like, again, this isn't like a a woe is founder thing. What I'm trying to point out is this is a very one-directional contract, right? This is a very, if what we're saying is, hey, no one's gonna give back to the founder, then what I'm also saying is that the founder is also gonna say, hey. If if this thing's, if you're only looking at it one way saying that this, the startup's not gonna work for for you, then you also have to say if you're working for the startup, it's also not a fair transaction either. It's got to be balanced in some way, and I'm also not saying it has to be one way or the other, which is why this was so hard to come to a conclusion on this.
Ryan Rutan: Why can't it just be both, right? Why can't it just be equitable? Why can't it be, why can't the giving be circular? Why is it unidirectional?
Wil Schroter: Here's why, I still haven't come to the conclusion. Here's where I've seen it work. When a company is so freaking profitable, that there's so much to go around, right? Which happens so rarely, right, it happens so rarely. So like, it's like when you become a Google, and you make so much money, that yes, the founders are infinitely rich, but they're so benevolent that they give everybody steak dinners for lunch, right? And like, and make Everybody millionaires, there's so much money that everyone's just so fat and happy that it just sort of doesn't matter. And even then they complain, right?
Ryan Rutan: That's out of millions of companies. Yeah, it kind
Wil Schroter: of never happens, right. The folks I'm talking about are not them. It's almost like when you get to that problem, you don't have a problem anymore, right? I'm talking about the folks that are on the other side of this equation where the the startup isn't working for them. Were they're on the ass end of this, and they're like, how do I get out of this? We're they're on the part of it where they're like, yeah, I'm just working for my investors, like, my team makes 3x what I do, right? Like, what happened here? Like, I'm so upside down in this thing. Like, why is it, like, this is, this is so typical of like a series A, Series B funded startup where the founders like, I haven't had a pay raise in 5 years, right? Like. What the hell? I'm the lowest,
Ryan Rutan: I'm the lowest paid member of my team, right? Yeah,
Wil Schroter: like, like what the hell happened? It, it happens a lot. And, and they're kind of like somehow I somebody ripped up my contract of like this thing was supposed to work for me. And like, I'm, am I supposed to feel good about this? Like, is is this like oh you did it to yourself, so just eat it, right? Like cause no one else is eating it, right? Everyone else either quit or like, you know, whatever. And I think this is just an interesting proposition where we resign ourselves to the fact. That this thing that we created, this contract that we created, we lit on fire? Yeah, that seems bizarre to me.
Ryan Rutan: You know, it's funny to me that we we tend to treat it very, very differently if it's a corporate environment, you know, a larger company, yeah, that we all started small, but if we're talking about a big corporation versus a startup company, and I think part of that is The perceived direct benefit of the founder, right? It's it's easier to villainize that that one person versus that faceless CEO you've never heard of or whatever. Where does it come from? Cause part of what we're talking about is just the perception and the way that founders are treated. Right, going back to your, your, your, the politicized version of this where it's like, well, you know, a founder should take all the risks and we, you know, we, we, we blame them for failure, but we also don't want to celebrate them for success. So what the fuck, right? What the fuck? Right. Where does that come from? Like who, who are we actually trying to, so I guess part of this is like, who are we trying to satisfy with who does this work for? Right, if you and I were to answer this question today, who are we actually trying to answer this for? We're trying to provide a a a an appropriate answer that the public can tolerate? Are we trying to provide an answer for for the the people who work for a a startup founder who, you know, you may be disappointed that this is working for them or not, or is this for the founder? Like I typically. We're we're talking to the founders, but I'm actually trying to figure out like who's actually asking this damn question, right? Like
Wil Schroter: founders, a lot of people right now unfortunately, um, a lot of founders,
Ryan Rutan: but, but I guess my, my point here being we're asking the question, but like, who did, who did the founders care about satisfying with the answer, because if we were to just say, right, logic would dictate, logic and maybe a little greed would dictate if we just said, well, let's just always make it work for the founder. Right? Clearly we're not doing that, and, and so why? Who is it that we're worried about satisfying with this answer?
Wil Schroter: Well, let me be super specific because I'm freakishly biased. I only care about founders, yeah. Just be clear,
Ryan Rutan: so that that's kind of my point. So then the answer is easy. Make the startup work for you. Do whatever you have to to make it work for you. If we're, we're that biased towards founders and we are, then that's the answer, but it isn't the answer, it doesn't work.
Wil Schroter: And I, and I say that not without empathy for everyone else. I say this with with the heavy bias toward the founder journey, because when we talk to, you know, countless founders. What we find is that the founders get split apart by so many entities in their lives, right? So many people in their lives. They're trying to satisfy so many people, and it's not that that that they're so selfless and they never think about themselves, that's not it. It's that they get torn apart trying to satisfy so many different things in their lives, that it's very hard for them to kind of Resent her and say, how did I get here? You know, we talked in our last episode is where's the why? Why did I do this to begin with, right? That's a lot of what this is. It's like, wait, what are we even doing here? Like this isn't the product I wanted to build. This isn't the mission that I started with, right? When I say all I care about is founders, what I'm saying is my job, our job, right? You know, with Ryan, what you and I do and what we do at Startups.com. is to grab founders by the shoulders and pull them back and say, well, let's let's take a step back, like, how did we get here? Let's restart, right?
Ryan Rutan: I think, I think one of the the places where I, I struggle when I'm when I'm working with other founders is when I, I see them in that position. Where not only are they now in that spot where they are clearly like objectively down to the down to the finances, that all of it, clearly working for the company, right, not the other way around, and where they're working for the benefit of the startup, not the startup working for the benefit of the founder, and it's unclear whether there's even a pathway for correction, and I know you you you see this too, where now all of a sudden we're in a scenario where it's like, is there even a course question to be had here? Can this thing ever Work for the founder, where it's just like because you and I both know people who have spent 10 years more than they needed to on a startup company that was never going to end up benefiting them, but they get caught up in all that emotion around like the employees, right? I, these people's livelihood depend on me, right? The investors, this person's, you know, financial outcome depends on me. The clients, the the the benefits that they achieve from me depend on me, and at some point there's just, there isn't any room left for the founder. And in that equation anywhere, and that's a really tough one to see, because at some point we have to go like if there truly isn't, and we've done an entire another podcast on this, I won't, I won't go too far down this trail, but what it costs everybody else versus what it costs the founders. Let's just say like, start up shuts down tomorrow. Everybody lost their job together, founder included, right? They lost their job. But what do the employees not lose? They didn't lose their identity in most cases. They probably didn't lose their credit score, right? They probably didn't lose, right, all that other stuff, all these other things, the relationships that it costs along the way, all the other things that we talk about, all these other intangibles and tangibles that end up being the the the costs of of a startup company. And so I think that's where it's like when we go back and we do this calculus around like well what do I owe everybody else? Like I, I'm here to to serve everyone else because because that's the way this has to be, you know, it's it's the it's the deal I made, except that it wasn't the contract I signed originally, but it's the one that was presented to me shortly thereafter. Right. And it's just a big question of, you know, going back to the like the why are we here, right? And unfortunately, It's one of those things where, like, cumulatively, a lot of times for founders, there's still enough why, like what why? Because I care about all these people because I care about my investors, because I care about that, and the one the why that can go away is the why they were doing. And I think that we have to be so careful and I don't want to turn this back to last week's episode, but we have to be careful not to lose sight of that, or the answer to this question actually stops mattering altogether.
Wil Schroter: Right, I agree. Look, I I think for the most part, for most founders, we all start off with the same job of who's working for who. We all start off with this startup is gonna work for me. We might have some slightly more altruistic goals of how we want the startup to work for other people, but generally speaking, we start off with the startup that's gonna work for me. But by definition, when we add one person that's not us, we all of us. Sudden create a whole legion of new bosses. And the problem is over time, we give all kinds of power to those new bosses in day by day, give that power away to those bosses over time. And in that time, we begin ripping up the very contract that we created to build this company in in due time with enough time. With enough power given up, we become not just employees to our companies, but slaves to the very company that we built. Our job as founders is not to work for our startups. Our job as founders is to build a startup that works for us, to build something where people can work with us, but to make sure we're the ones running the thing from the time we started it to the time we exit.
Ryan Rutan: Overthinking your startup because you're going it alone, you don't have to, and honestly, you shouldn't because instead, you can learn directly from peers who've been in your shoes. Connect with bootstrapped founders and the advisors helping them win in the Startups.com community. Check out the Startups.com community at www.startups.com to see if it's for you. Could be just the thing you need. I hope to see you inside.