I've worked on a few projects over the years and finally had one that I was proud to call a startup. We got into a top incubator program and busted our butts for a really long time. We had a set of willing investors, a rock solid MVP evolving to a real product and a launch event that was the talk of the town. We did everything right, asked good questions and were personable as hell. And in the end, I departed from the venture due to team fit issues. No matter how much I want to point fingers, I know I was also another source of the problems. I guess what I learned from this situation is -- deal with your shit early. I knew there were problems, but our team swept these issues under the "I'm going to work hard and sleep on the floor" rug and by the time we were ready to talk about them, they were at an unforgivable stage. Startups are intense and I was OK with that.. but the minute I stopped having fun, I stopped being productive. I also started to sacrifice my own activities to make the startup work and when I eventually did get burned out, I was feeling pretty bummed overall. A better balance and celebrating more team wins could have definitely helped.
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