Where My Space Ends
May 13, 2020•377 words
359
Yesterday, I've chatted with a founder, who's been running his company for around 4 years solo. He was the chief of everything. The entire product depended on solely on the work that he put in it every single day. If something failed, that was his fault. If something succeeded, he could attribute all the success to himself. He knew the ins and outs of the product incredibly well, as he was the only architect of it.
Yet, after a few years of operating solo, he decided to hire extra people. That decision was not easy for him, as he had zero experience hiring. It was his first time being on the other end of the recruiting pipeline; hiring instead of being hired. We're scared of the unknown, and so was he, when presented with a vision of giving up total control over his creation.
Yet, as painful as it was at first, the hiring process went pretty smoothly. The product had a very strong and helpful community around it, and so searching for new employees was pretty easy. All he did was just asking existing users if maybe they'd want to join the team.
The hardest part was actually letting go of total control. Because of the fact that before he was holding all the keys and all the ideas, slowly delegating parts of his work wasn't easy for him. It took him a few solid months to stop being anxious about letting other people do the important work.
I've been a bit worried about that too. Almost a year after it's launch, my biggest project so far - Produktywny Uczeń is growing fast and needs more people working on it. Especially as I'm preparing to launch the English version. It's been a solo project from the beginning - I am the person that did everything: the technical work (both backend and frontend), the script-writing and content production, and all marketing. And yeah, I can do all of these, but I'm not good at all of them.
But that's how it just is in life; nothing is singular, nothing can be kept solely within one being without causing chaos or failure.
P.S. If you'd like to join (as a volunteer for now), shoot me an email.