I'm the co-founder of a pretty lean & 100% word of mouth >1.5M ARR SAAS [1], but god, I'm jealous of the success of Peter, who got to this point with a simple tech stack.
Pretty sure a lot of people here have the same feeling. It's one I had before, and I still have after my success. There is always something else, something better you wish you had.
In my hometown, there is an entrepreneur; one everyone knows who started a 3D studio with now more than > 300 employees; a massive success. He lives in my neighborhood, so we happen to discuss from time to time on walks. He, at one point, stopped me when I told him how much I admired his work and how envious I was of his abilities to scale smoothly; he told me: "Phil, there is nothing I would love more than running a small profitable web business like yours with just two of my buddies."
When success hits for the first time, it's a disturbing feeling realizing your desires and insecurities are pretty much still all there. You are still an envious bag of meat.
Anyway, congrats Peter on the success and fantastic journey! Yes, I'm still a bit jealous, like most here :) But I work on this. I got to go; I got my Yin Yoga class in 20 minutes. It will surely help me realize how lucky I am to live a life of beauty and experiments. It will help me recognize this burning jealousy, accept it, as it is simply part of this beautiful game of life.
> "Phil, there is nothing I would love more than running a small profitable web business like yours with just two of my buddies."
I even heard this from more than a few VC-funded founders of famous startups that they'd rather be in my position as it's a simpler life with higher profit margins and less drama than managing big teams. I don't know if that's true because I never did it but I am happy with my simple life right now.
And thank you for all the nice words, I don't know why you'd have to be jealous, Missive looks great and you're doing amazing!
One of the open secrets in the startup world is that builders like building, but large businesses require operators who like to operate. The two skills aren't always found in the original founder.
Some builders grow into large-scale operators, but not all of them really enjoy it.
One of my most memorable experiences in my early college years was getting a small meeting with the CTO of a well-known tech company. All of us college kids wanted to talk technology with him, but I vividly remember him sighing heavily and lamenting that his role had become very removed from the technology and implementation details long ago. He was clearly successful, but I could tell he missed the exciting days of doing hands-on engineering work and getting things done directly.
This resonates a lot with me. I'm hitting revenue metrics that I used to dream about, but still feel like success is something so far away. I see other businesses (and think of business ideas) that I consider much simpler than dealing with hardware issues, chip supply problems, etc.
I guess the grass is always greener, and it is hard to get off the hedonic treadmill. Hitting milestones used to give me such a rush when we were just starting out, but by now milestones have become "table stakes".
When did you consider that success hit? How did you recognize it? How do you acknowledge the fact that success hit, yet still feel insecurities / desires / jealousy of other business?
PS. thanks for answering my tweets about cross platform development a couple of years ago! We've got our native apps out there now.
I don't know if it's related or not (still trying to figure this out), but I personnally went into a bizarre mental state of mind after hitting the two big milestones I had in life since I was a 20 years old young adult, having 4 kids and creating a recognized SaaS with > 100K$ revenue.
The "now what?" I kept asking myself, is a strange question to ask yourself, when you've been so dedicated for so long.
Pretty sure a lot of people here have the same feeling. It's one I had before, and I still have after my success. There is always something else, something better you wish you had.
In my hometown, there is an entrepreneur; one everyone knows who started a 3D studio with now more than > 300 employees; a massive success. He lives in my neighborhood, so we happen to discuss from time to time on walks. He, at one point, stopped me when I told him how much I admired his work and how envious I was of his abilities to scale smoothly; he told me: "Phil, there is nothing I would love more than running a small profitable web business like yours with just two of my buddies."
When success hits for the first time, it's a disturbing feeling realizing your desires and insecurities are pretty much still all there. You are still an envious bag of meat.
Anyway, congrats Peter on the success and fantastic journey! Yes, I'm still a bit jealous, like most here :) But I work on this. I got to go; I got my Yin Yoga class in 20 minutes. It will surely help me realize how lucky I am to live a life of beauty and experiments. It will help me recognize this burning jealousy, accept it, as it is simply part of this beautiful game of life.
[1] https://missiveapp.com/blog/how-we-built-1m-arr-email-client