FUCK THAT! THE MARKETING PLAN MAKES NO SENSE AND WE DON'T NEED TO RUN THOSE FUCKING NUMBERS!!!
This is a taste of the brutally honest colorful language I shamefully use with my co-founder when we have our harsh, but thankfully rare disagreements...scary? maybe... passionate? you bet....productive?...maybe...While having our once in a while founder free for all today I figured I should write about this not so much covered topic...having fights with your fellow start up founders is well hidden among the tech world. We all know people don't always get a long, but for some reason we fear to probe into the dark side of a start up. I spoke to friend of mine yesterday who also stated that "when people are passionate about something fights will happen", which I wholeheartedly agree with. The most important part is moving forward.
I never plan for these things to happen...it starts with our daily schedule of stuff to do, then we have a topic not fully covered, then we give our viewpoints, then we find our strong disagreements and THEN!!!! well...everything escalates from there...we don't always see eye to eye and communication inevitably breaks down whenever you're talking to anyone about anything.
What happens after the communication breaks down? Well this is what makes or breaks your team isn't it?...Do we quit the project?...Do we keep fighting forever? Of course not...since my co-founder has a ton of my trust I know they won't leave me. The more interesting answer is we have a pattern of solving our fights and moving on to the solution.
Whenever things get heated I simply make my grotesque, not so proud, infantile comment and slow down...I try to notice it, but if I'm enraged sometimes I don't. Nonetheless my anger gets pointed out and a break is taken. I leave and go on a walk or engage in some sort of physical activity to take my anger out and cool down completely removing myself from the situation, then finally everything clears up.
The physical activity helps my heart rate slow down and calms me down, it also shows me that there's more to life then business and gets my mind off of immediate frustration.
In the middle of the fight I might say something that I don't mean like: "THIS WILL NEVER WORK" or "WHY AM I WASTING MY TIME WITH YOU?", but instead of taking it to heart, my co-founder sees it for stress or miss-communication and prompts a 10 minute break. When my co-founder falls into a fit of rage, I respond likewise and magically all seems right in the world after those seconds we spend separated.
The break itself does wonders for me. I look back at the problem and notice what could have been done better; I see how stupid I was, why I wasn't making any sense and more importantly I get to gather logic on the core matter itself.
I have a strong feeling that I'm not the only one that gets into fights with my co-founder, but the bottom line is as long as you are willing to stick it out with that person you'll only learn from each other and get stronger.
I'm sure many of you have had your harsh founder disagreements, my simple solution is to take10 and re-group. As corny as it sounds, I think if the founders are loyal and passionate, a start up can succeed and overcome any obstacles (you can't be dumb either). Its more about bringing the idea to lief then your little disagreements, but we may all sometimes forget. At the end of the day people are the ones that really count for a start ups success, if you have the right team in place magic can happen.
Thanks for the read and cheers,
-Vlad
