“I was working all day until like midnight.” – An Entrepreneur’s Account of How It’s Going

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The following is an excerpt from After School discussing the ups and downs of running a startup.

 

When people ask you “What do you do?” what do you say?

Right now I am in transition. This last week I was interviewing. I’ve basically been involved in a start-up, so you can say that I was kind of sort of an entrepreneur for quite a long time.

I was basically never working because I was having fun.

 

What are your hours like?

My hours were basically wake up, start doing work at home, do emails maybe at 8am, show up to the office around 10. I was basically never working because I was having fun. I was working all day until like midnight. I didn’t have to sit at a desk and pretend that I was busy. I would do what I needed to do, and then go read or do something else until the next thing happened.

I was very relaxed because it was a slow process of project management. My hours were not very strict; I wasn’t in a rush.

 

Do you like it?

It was great. I felt that I was accomplishing many things. I had to. I didn’t know anything about much of the tech initially. The Engineers that designed it were gone and the construction people did not know how things worked. They were Spanish speakers so they have some difficulties communicating or understanding my other co-founder, so they just got nowhere.

Because I was the mid-point, the bilingual person and the project manager, I had to learn how to do all of these things that I had no idea about. They were not business – they were engineering and software. I had to figure out things, be on the phone with companies, do a lot of ordering of parts, understand how systems work, and so on.

It was great, I liked the experience. I felt that I was challenged everyday and that I was overcoming these challenges. It made me have a lot of satisfaction in my job. I was working with one other person and we got along great. We had a lot of difficulties in the beginning with our working styles, but we became friends and we became close as you do in a start-up.

I was not making enough money. I was barely living with credit cards and it was very tough financially.

 

What’s the best part of the job?

The best part of the job was the dream that what you’re doing is gonna be something big and that you’re working towards it – that you’re getting closer every single day.

 

What’s the worst part of the job?

That you don’t know what’s going to happen with your life. That I was not making enough money. I was barely living with credit cards and it was very tough financially.

 

If you would like to participate/be interviewed for the blog, contact me at nkem.nwankwo@lifeafterschool.co.