You Are (Not) Your Product

For the last few weeks, I have had a keen interest in the work the Ojos guys have been doing. If you haven’t seen it yet, then I highly recommend checking it out. Of course, I can’t really say WHY I am interested just yet, but that’s all in the works.

As part of my interest, I’ve been subscribed to Munjal Shah’s (the CEO) blog, Recognizing Deven. I guess in many ways I commiserate with Munjal as we’re in similar situations in terms of what we can and can’t talk about regarding our businesses. If you don’t read his blog now, I recommend it for any entrepreneur in the software side of things.

I could probably write about every post he’s made with a similar experience, so I’ll start with one from today. In Seeing Is Hearing, he writes:

Frankly hearing the feedback was just too personal for me. When I build a product like this one it is an extension of myself. When I was at Andale (the last company I co-founded) people told me there was an issue with the product, I always felt that I let them down. When they told me they loved it I was elated.

The truth is, no one who has ever invented anything can handle criticism all that well. In countless conversations with people about business and entrepreneurship, I’ve uttered the words “This business is an extension of me”. It’s not surprising that there’s little to no distinction between personal and work time in my life (as sad as that may sound). My happiness is woefully tied to the ultimate success of my business.

Of course, it’s hard for me to rationalize it out of the picture either. For anyone who’s heard my Pessimist pitch, you know my fuel tank analogy, if you haven’t - here’s the 15 word primer: “Running your own business is like driving a car, you need gas to keep going”. There’s the obvious financial metaphor there, but for me, it means the will to fight it out.

I’ve met too many entrepreneurs that can’t manage the Pessimists well enough. Pessimists pretty much are the forces that consume gas (your friends, family, co-workers, competitors, and the like). What ends up happening is this fuel quickly gets depleted and people simple don’t have it left in them to continue.

Uncovering the things that drain your tanks is useful. Discovering ways to refuel it is priceless.