stories of a startup - the first 2 days

Starting up a company...nothing more exciting than this! After 2 days of working with David Madié I´m already on track. Man, it makes such a difference if you just have somebody to indicate to you the next possible step! And, even more important, who gives you the feeling that he believes in you, that you are going to be successfull, and who encourages you to start now. START NOW! This is the basic message that I want to yell out to everybody ever trying to start up: START NOW! Go with the passion. Whatever there is passion for is the next step. Don´t get caught up in planning and thinking about how you could or should do things, but DO them.
We worked with this guy from Startup Company, he´s a real pro. He gave us many worksheets on which we could see which next steps would be possible and then we just did what we felt most passionate about.
An idea is very fragile in the beginning. The energy that we can give it is all there is. So follow that energy!
He also talked about the fear of many entrepreneurs that their idea might get stolen. You have to overcome this fear. It is very unlikely that anybody steals it anyways, because those that might be interested in having the product that your idea is about are probably the ones who will never go all the way of bringing it into action, because they are no entrepreneurs. So the only group that might be "of danger" for you are entrepreneurs, but they are very unlikely to stal it, too, because it is not their idea, and entrepreneurs want to realize their own idea, not somebdy else´s. That´s only half the fun.
So yesterday and the day before I worked on my idea. I identified some next steps that I wanted to take, I did some of them, like research and writing an email and telling others about my idea and getting feedback, I identified the next key challenges of my start-up business, so that I would know what I wanted to work on next, like getting a better picture of the actual business idea or think about my market position, I found a mission statement and finally I found a name. Today I made a logo, looks so nice, and it makes it even more real, that this company is actually existing! Can´t believe it!
I also worked a bit on a story of why I am working on this company, answering questions like Who am I and where do I come from? Where did I get the inspiration for my idea? Why is this idea important to me? Why was I the right one to realize the idea? Who am I wirking with an how did I get to meet them? Answering theses questions and telling the story provides trust. If people know whom they are talking to and why this person is passionate about what he/she does, they are much likely to also find inspiration for it.
Anyways, the last question I cannot answer. Until now I am working alone on this. I made a very important experience on this topic: a teammate of mine asked me if she could work together with me. I said yes. This was in a very, very early stage of my idea and actually she was thinking that I was working on another idea that I had had before. I briefly told her about the current idea. She suggested some things on what we could do and suddenly I felt that all my energy went away. I felt totally drained. Something was going on that was not right. I could not pinpoint it, but I felt it had to do with her entering my project. So I told her that I would not like to work with her, which now I regret, because now I think what was actually going on was not that I did not want to work with her, but that I did not want to change my idea! Did not wanna kill my darling, oh no. I even started crying in front of her! Poor girl. The lesson I learned from this is that there are times when it is ok for somebody else to join and sometimes it is better to keep it for yourself. It is an issue of ownership. I felt as if somebody was stealing my baby. Now, that I am in a different phase, I would love to work together with somebody, because now I am more clear of what I actually want to do. But now she does not want to work with me on this one any more. Understandable. Funny to note that she had a similar thing with me some time ago.

It´s all about energy. When you have energy you can work and when you don´t have it, then it is better not to work. But sometimes the energy also comes while working. Today I felt the lack of a partner, somebody to talk to about the idea and to get inspired again. I started working on my logo and then showed some drafts to a friend. He liked them. Then my roommates came by and I also showed it to them and told them about the whole idea of starting a business (they did not know about it yet). They really liked the idea, liked the logo and even gave me new things to think about and make my range of thoughts bigger. This gave me a lot of energy again! It felt like quite a step to show the logo, who knows, they might not like it? But they did. They even guessed what the whole thing is about just from taking a look at the logo, without knowing what the company is about. Great! :-)