On October 2nd, 2015, I left my job at an exciting startup to work full time at Sturdy. Lately, I’ve been reflecting on the reasons for starting Sturdy and how it’s been going for the past few months.

Why start a business?

We created Sturdy for several reasons. For one, we all knew we wanted to work together. Since Starter School, John, Chance, and I have kept in touch and knew that we would one day work together, whether it was on one product or client work.

We also wanted to gain experience quickly. Doing client work exposes us to many different business and technical problems that we might miss working on a single product.

Most of all, our motivation for creating Sturdy was the opportunity to shape the direction and legacy of a company. It’s rare to be able to do that and an incredible privilege.

Challenges and lessons

Six months isn’t a long time. However, I’ve learned more in the past few months than perhaps the past 5 years (Besides during Starter School).

  1. The most humbling lesson came in the shape of sales. Communicating your value to a potential client is more difficult that I thought it would be. It takes time to get a company’s stakeholders on board to begin a project. Spending tens of thousands of dollars in not a small decision for most companies.

  2. We have to get out and talk to people. Meeting all the people we can around Chicago and Durham has been the main source of leads for us. The more people we talk to about their businesses or the businesses they want to start, the better chance we have of winning business.

  3. As a three person company, we all shoulder a substantial load of responsibilities. Learning to balance coding, managing a client, and selling new business has been tough, and it’s not going away any time soon.

  4. Working from home presents some challenges. The line between work and the rest of your life is easily blurred. Starting a business takes a huge amount of time and effort, but keeping things balanced important. That last bit of work that I’m about to do at 9pm can probably wait until tomorrow. If it can’t, I failed at planning.

  5. There are some incredibly generous people in the industry that have given us advice on how to be successful. Especially the people who we have spoken to directly, but also the industry leaders that take the time to write about what works for them.

Starting a business is easier than it’s ever been, but there are still many challenges to overcome. I’ve learned so much in under half a year and I don’t see that slowing down any time soon.