valachio

I met a potential cofounder. He is the same age as me and we are both interested in building a startup in the same field. Our skillset also complement each other's. On the work-side of things, we are a solid match.

However our personalities are quite different. In other words, I wouldn't want to be friends with him or hang out with him as a friend. Actually come to think of it, he's not someone I want to sit next to for too long.

I figured that if I am to build a startup with someone, I could be sitting next to them 12 hours a day, every day, for many years to come. I have to enjoy or at least tolerate their company. At the same time, it's a rare opportunity to meet someone whose interests are very similar to mine with complementing skillsets.

I could keep looking for other cofounders, or I could try to see if I can learn to tolerate this potential cofounder. What would you do in this situation?

I'm raising capital for a startup for the first time.

At my startup we currently have 2 classes of shares. Class A is a "super voting" share with 10 votes and Class B is a common share with 1 vote. Pretty standard nowadays.

I understand VCs want to buy "preferred" stock with liquidation preferences. How will that work into our dual-class stock system? Will we need to create a Class C share for VCs for the preferred stock? Or is it a special type of stock which does not require a new class of shares to be implemented?

Also, some articles I read say that preferred shares have no voting rights, is that right? Does that mean VCs purchase shares with liquidation preference but with 0 voting power?

I have this problem where I tend to overthink when I'm working on a side project.

In actuality I would prefer to build something crappy than to build nothing at all. At least that way I have something cool to show to people.

But I find it tough to stop my mind from thinking stuff like "this thing you're working on isn't going to work, it's probably not going to be useful at all. let's just stop working on it"

As a result I find it really hard to work on side projects and I end up wasting that time on consuming useless things like social media and video games.

How do I stop myself from overthinking when building side projects and just do it and finish it?

If you are dying to work on an idea but none of your current ideas excite you, would you work on the best idea on the list of ideas you have (even if it's not that exciting to you), or would you just hang back a bit and wait for better ideas?

When you are searching for the next project/startup to work on, what kind of things should you do to fill up your day?

With so much free time on my hands, I find it quite difficult to not get distracted by video games or mindlessly browsing the Internet. The devil finds work for idle hands.

It seems like ideas for projects/startups don't really come about if you sit down and just think super hard. Ideas usually come to me spontaneously from some life experience, so it doesn't seem like I can force it. Unless I am doing it wrong somehow...

One thing I tried to do is to just work on various side projects. But I find it really hard to work on a project without a clear vision on what I want the project to become. I just lose interest and stop.

I find that I can only persevere with a project when I have a clear vision on what it will become.

It's been quite awhile since I felt genuine excitement about working on something. I know what that feels like and every day I'm trying to find a way to find that excitement again.

So how do you go about living each day when you are unsure of what you want to work on?

I'm finding great difficulty in finding a purpose and committing to it.

In April 2019, I stopped working full time on my previous project which was a success and makes me decent money to this day.

Since then I have worked on more than 10 ideas, mostly in software but not always. For one project, I worked full time on it for 3 months, only to eventually get burnt out and abandon.

It's been 1.5 years since I have been in this phase. Life is becoming quite bad.

I'm tired of finding a new idea, getting super excited about it for a few weeks/months, only to see its flaws and give up on it.

I'm progressing into a deadly mindset where I feel like that even if I come across a great idea, I probably will prematurely give up on it.

Nowadays all I want is to binge play video games to numb my feelings so I stop feeling bad all the time.

How do I commit to an idea? How do I stop abandoning the projects I start? I can't stop myself from seeing the flaws with an idea and giving up on it, wasting time and demotivating me even further.

Some background info about me. I'm 22 years old, college dropout, based in Toronto. Over the past 2 years I built a solid Internet business.

I will call my current business "B".

B is currently making $500k / year profit. If I keep building it full time, it will make several millions a year. However, B is not a very impactful business, nor will it ever scale into a billion dollar company. It's a great lifestyle business, not much more.

As I built B, my ambitions broadened. When I think of what I really want to do with my life, I realized my dream is to build the next great company (e.g. Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Google). I also realized I don't even care if I succeed or not - as long as I am chasing the dream, I believe my life will be fulfilled.

As a result, I stopped working full time on B in April 2019, I explored a bunch of new projects, ranging from other Internet projects, a video game, to a chair (yes, designing a chair).

I got deep into some of these ideas. The video game for example, I spent 4 months full time on it (Nov 2019 - April 2020). For awhile, I thought I was going to fully commit to building video games for many years to come. Then eventually the idea fizzled out after I thought more about it. I realized a video game company wasn't the right path to my ultimate goal, so as of now, it's been a month since I touched the game and pretty much abandoned the project.

I'm currently in "The Search" phase once again. And it feels really bad. Life feels directionless when there is no vision. I wake up each morning feeling lethargic, instead of energetic and excited to work on a project.

I'm scared of getting trapped into a cycle of working on new projects that go nowhere.

My question boils down to this - Should I keep building B full time and hope to indirectly discover a new idea along the way, or should I directly focus on exploring new fields, new opportunities and new ideas?

tl;dr Got a solid business going but I dream of building a much greater business. Not sure if I should spend my time focusing on current business or looking for new ideas.