LTB #7: I Joined a Company - Transitioning from Founder to Employee

Here is what I am covering today:
1. How did I get here
2. Fresh start
3. Typical thought process of failed founder
4. My transition
5. Conclusion

📣 Announcement

I have joined Giraffe 360 as a Lead Product Manager. Actually, 5 months ago 😅

BUT the transition from Employer to Employee was an interesting experience, so I wanted to share it 👇

How did I get here

For the last 10 years, I have been running my businesses - one successful one, not so much.

A successful one was an Agency business - It was a great pain to make one, but I finally reached a point where I could call that a successful business. In the last year of running my company, we reached a 1.5m turnover with 30% EBITDA, which is more than great for the size of the market we were operating, and EBITDA was way above average. But - I felt stuck. I got so fed up with solution-based business, where you constantly fight against the wind regarding cash flow, client expectations vs. reality, talent retention, etc. For the last 3 years, I have been trying to scale this business in many different ways - from partnerships and franchises to opening offices. 

The conclusion was that - the agency business was not scalable, and I did not see where I could grow further, so I needed change - that is when I decided to give away my business to people who are still new to Entrepreneurship so that they could start building their luck and fortune.

Then, for more than two years, I tried to scale a product we were creating in parallel with our agency business - it had some traction, but now the question was, can I scale it - my business partner and I went all in on it, and we just could not scale it. We invested significant capital, had some minor investors, and, most importantly - our sweat, time, and 100% devotion. We concluded that the traction we had was more of an anomaly rather than a signal of opportunity - we did scale it a bit, but not in proportion to the effort and capital we invested, so I decided to let it go - one of the hardest and most relieving decisions, but here is where the fun part begins. 

👉 I have a post here if you wish to know more about this journey. 

Fresh start

Nothing beats a feeling when you can just pull your hands up and leave the office thinking, "Not my problem anymore." Well, that is not how it happens when you are a business owner, but it feels like that when you have made a decision. And then, you realize that without all the obligations and responsibilities, this is the moment when you can start over, go any direction, and do whatever you like - and that is where it becomes the most complicated. 

You start to question what you are good at. What do you actually like doing? What industry should I tackle? One thing I was sure of was that I wanted to do something outside AR/VR. 

Typical thought process of failed founders

I am saying "Typical" because I have spoken to a few failed founders, and they all share the same thought process in the moment of transition. Here are the common ones: 

Feelings of Failure

One common thing among founders is a sense of responsibility, and it comes to everything - including Failure. It is very easy to blame everything else except the founder for Failure - like no one needs a product, the market is not ready, those competitors, etc., but that is not how we founders usually think. We think it is about us - "I was a bad founder/entrepreneur/manager, and that is why I could not get traction for my product." Even though we know there are strong parts about us as founders and there is a chance that no one needs your product, but it is hard not to internalize if all you did did not bring results. 

Also, founders get glorified for pursuing their ideas and vision and embarking on this mystical and challenging journey of entrepreneurship, so you get quite a lot of attention while you build a business - and you need that attention to build that business, so people notice what you are creating and you have to appear rock solid convinced about your vision. And now, you have to come out and say, "I was wrong",  "I could not deliver," and so on. 

There is also a lot to do with tying founders identity to a company - 👉 I posted about it here.

No actual skills

When running a company, you are doing everything and nothing simultaneously. When you start up, you are doing everything, but quickly, you realize (I hope) that you cannot do everything. You cannot be good at everything, so you search for talent around you that would help you first with things you are not good at or do not want to do. At one point, your job is to get the right people on the bus and the wrong people off and get the best possible result out of your team, strategy, and many other things, but the point is that you are just connecting the dots.

So the question arises once you drop out of this state, you do not have a dots to connect - what skills do you have? None. But that is not true. This was How I felt at first, but after doing some digging, I realized that somehow, many other founders and I keep things we are doing for granted - each of us has our strengths, but the thing is, If we have built a business, most likely we have quite a few solid skills  (leadership, problem-solving, adaptability and many many more) as that task is not for faint hearted - just need to snap out of victim position and do a bit of analyzing. Help from outside can help here a lot here.

My transition

What to do next? 

Once I let go of Overly, I decided to take a break from work for a year to spend more time with family, learn some skills I have always wanted to explore, and just let the steam out of the system as it accumulates quite intensely while being a founder. At the same time, I had some small product ideas but not THE BUSINESS IDEA to go after next, so I was kind of playing around with the thought that I might have to join a company at some point.  There were some fears about that, a bit of EGO playing its devil's role here, but the luxury I had was that I had some financial safety that allowed me to take some time off and figure that all out. 

Looking for a job

When I shared with some people that I might go and search for a company to join as an employee, it was very interesting to notice people's different reactions. Still, mostly, they split into two opinions:

1. "Everyone will want you - you have so much knowledge and skills."

2. "No one wants to hire a failure." 

So, speaking to people about this mainly did not help - it was 50/50. Though it was very interesting to observe how people perceive founders who have failed. At least in Latvia. But what helped was taking time to think about what I was good at. What helped even more was starting with what I do NOT want to do and what I am NOT good at, which helped me find what I want to do. This approach works great in many situations.

It is very important in this step not to think about what you want to be, but what you want to do - there is a big difference. Tried to share my view 👉 here.

Joining a company

In my case, I was lucky, someone needed my skill set earlier than I would have wanted to, but the offer ticked most boxes for what I thought I would like to do. The type of company I would like to work for as it was not important to go somewhere just to get a salary - it was even more important to have a place I could learn, have exciting challenges to solve, work at a larger scale, and most importantly have a mature founding team I could work with closely. That is how I joined Giraffe360 as a Lead Product Manager.

And I love it so far! By joining a company, most ex-founders fear switching from Autonomy to Hierarchy, which usually involves losing decision-making authority. Still, I do not feel that currently, the first month, it was a bit confusing to understand where my responsibilities start and where they end as I have not created processes here, I have not hired the people I am working with currently, and so on. 

What helped me the most was changing my mindset - I am pretty sure I can build a company and push it far, but now I am curious If I can get the same results by joining someone else's company. Can I be the manager who comes in and impacts wherever he is? 

Conclusion

Reflecting on this transition, I realize that the most challenging and transformative part of this transition has been confronting my limitations and biases as a founder. The struggles I faced in scaling my agency business and product, combined with the harsh realities of Failure, taught me invaluable lessons and skills, and in combination with my personality, I have a quite powerful toolset to do great things for my next ideas or companies I join.

At this moment, I want to work with companies that are a step ahead of where I was - I want to learn about things I could not in my companies and how to scale the business - especially if scaling is in the US market. Somewhere around Series-A/Series-B - is a sweet spot, exactly where Giraffe360 currently stands. I can see many things I would like to learn here and that there is an opportunity to scale up with the company.

For me personally, I am holding to my curiosity of "Can I bet that manager that comes into the company and drives impact?" after running businesses, it is so relieving to narrow the focus - I do not have to think anything outside my scope - sales, customer success, financials, hr stuff and so on. I need to build a strategy that would lead to product-led growth, and that is very interesting. 

Formulating all this helped me not to see this situation as a failure or a step backward but as a step forward. Eventually, I will return to entrepreneurship, but it is no longer the goal of self-interest, as it was years ago, but once I stumble on something worth pursuing.

If you are a founder in this transition, reach out, and I will be more than happy to help.