Hey Startup Guy! Don’t try to do everything

You have just started. Your idea is new and your startup is young. You want to run it in the “lean” mode and try to cut all costs that you possibly can. You become the HR guy to manage the existing employees and hire new ones. You are smart and good with numbers so you take up accounting too. It’s your venture after all; it makes sense for you to be doing the accounting. You take care of maintenance of the office because hiring a manager would be too expensive. You try to do everything when you are in the startup mode.

Well you shouldn’t.

I remember doing all of this myself when we just started Green Apple Solutions and fortunately we were lucky enough to realize very soon that trying to do everything is harming us a lot more than the money it was saving. You need to realize one thing. When you are doing all these things, you are not doing your actual job. If you are a developer you are not coding. If you are a marketer you are not taking meetings. Instead you are doing a tally of the attendance of your employees. Obviously these tasks have to be done. Bills have to be paid, invoices created and mailed, maintenance of office has to be done. But you don’t have to do it. I know it is tough for bootstrapped startups like us to easily digest the idea of paying a professional to do jobs which we feel we can do. I used to do consulting for hedge funds damn it. I can easily do the little accounting for my startup requires if I just take out 2 hours a week. But you know what; it’s never just 2 hours. A couple of hours here and a couple of hours there and before you know it a considerable chunk of your time has been consumed by such tasks. At this point you need to try to come out of the entrepreneur mode and try to think like an employee of the firm. Concentrate on what your primary job is. Create a “core job description” for yourself. The success of your startup is only dependent on how well you perform you actual duties. The time that you spend in coding and the time you are able to give to marketing presentations. The opportunity cost of the time spent in doing these tasks is too high compared to what you would pay professionals to do so. You need to put a value for your time and then make sure that you get the bang for the buck.

I will tell you one thing that I have leant from my experience. The initial times of the startup, when it is taking shape, are extremely crucial and it is absolutely important that you are doing the right things to make sure that your startup grows. I am sure if you look around; you can easily find startup friendly and affordable professionals who can help you in completing these critical yet distracting tasks. Remember, your venture needs you and you have to be there to support it.