It was my favorite job I've ever had. It was intense in the best way. I didn't have much contact with Budnitz, but the other 6 founders showed such a strong passion for the community, it was impossible for me to not to come to work excited.
I'd say most of the negative stress I felt was from knowing that the user base was growing faster than we could fill in feature gaps that would keep folks engaged. I felt like we couldn't quite catch up, and by the time the money started running out and interest started to wane, it was too late.
A few learnings:
- 7 founders is a lot. I don't want that to sound like a criticism, it just means the company is going to feel a bit different vs a more classic 2 or 3 founder setup.
- Positive feedback loops within a tight team of highly skilled people has a huge impact on getting more stuff done. That's how I would characterize the engineering team, and it was one of the highest-performing teams I've ever been a part of.
- Don't build a startup on a custom, in-house UI framework ;)
This. Time is precious, many good options already exist, and it's hard to do well, particularly in such a way that it doesn't cause unnecessary friction later. Unless your business _is_ building a UI framework, it's probably not integral to the business, thus acts as a pretty big distraction that isn't easy to pivot into a business itself.
