Things That Are Not True About Being A Founder

As we’ve gone from super-early stage founders to less-early stage founders, we’ve realized that we had SO many misconceptions about the lives of founders in this stage of a company. Read: that they had figured it out or had people to figure it out for them. And as we thought about how wrong we were, we realized how many things others misconstrue about us.

So below are the biggest things that are not true about being a founder.

You are the highest paid employee

Reality: False. So very false. As one of our earliest advisors told us, a lot of your employees will make more than you. Get over it. Fast. K. Trying.

You take money off the table when you fundraise

Reality: Depends on the stage, depends on the company. A lot of founders we know have had the opportunity to do this at larger fundraises and have noted that is when their ‘lifestyle’ started to change. We have not yet had or taken that opportunity, which makes it really fun when long lost family friends think we personally have made $8.5 million (what theSkimm raised as a Series B). Surprise: we have not!

The pit in your stomach that you used to have when talking to your old bosses goes away when you’re the boss

Reality: It’s even worse now. At any moment we go from an incredible high of everything’s exciting and has momentum to literally breaking out into a sweat when we get an email or text from an employee that says ‘hey can I talk to you for 10 min alone?’ We immediately think they are somewhere between A. Quitting B. Reporting some sort of awful harassment.

You stop being involved in the day-to-day

Reality: We can only speak for our company, but when we interview candidates and they say they are ‘surprised’ we still seem so involved, a small part of us dies, the other part of us slaps them in our head. We have no idea in what universe founders at this stage can stop being involved in the day-to-day of growing a company. We live and breathe theSkimm allllllll day long, just as much if not more than we did day 1 on our couch, but with higher stakes. Read: We have mouths (employees) to feed.

Startup lesson of the day: Don’t judge a book by its cover or a founder by its press.