Your Ego & Startup Reporting for Founders: Fight Your Instincts
As most readers know, I have invested in a lot of early stage startups. The hardest challenge is knowing what is going on with the business you invested in. You are supposed to get a quarterly report even as a minority investor. However, this tends to be pretty haphazard. Most of the time the founder is just way too busy. An interesting phenomenon I’ve noticed for startup reporting, when things are good, you get the report. But when things are going wrong, which is most of the time, the reports start to fall off. And then you don’t hear from them until things get back on track or the company shuts down.
From my conversation, this seems to be what every VC and angel investor faces. This is why so many investors push for board seats so they can understand what is happening and have some sense of control, whether this is reality or not.
Why does this happen? Fear of being judged. I might add, this also tends to be more the case for male founders than female founders. Female founders are much more willing to open up and ask for help. Guy founders just hide and isolate themselves. The ego is our enemy.
And I totally get it. I act this way myself. When things are going wrong, I just hide. I HATE asking for help. But this is so silly & self destructive. Swallow your stupid pride. Everyone needs help at some point in their life. The sooner you realize this, the better.
So you have to fight your own stupid instincts. Don’t hide. The sometimes wise Tai Lopez said it very well:
“When you aren’t making enough money, do not make the mistake of becoming an isolated hermit. Do the opposite – get more extroverted - make more phone calls, post more to social media, set more in-person meetings to close deals.”
You have to act positive and take action, and then surprising things happen. Motion creates emotion. Things start to turn around. So when things are bad, get out there. Start reaching out to people and meet them. Go to events. Do something. Action ALWAYS beats passiveness.