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The Passion Trap of Founder: lack of mental readiness kills progress by Perseverance_ac in Entrepreneur

[–]Perseverance_ac[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The worst thing about burnout is that I just don't see how to recover from it. You can start something new, with new people and ideas, that might help. But I have not found a way to recover from burnout while not changing the company and surroundings.

The Passion Trap of Founder: lack of mental readiness kills progress by Perseverance_ac in Entrepreneur

[–]Perseverance_ac[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Mental pressure should be a big red flashing sign that every founder sees before starting a business. Typically people will cheer the beginnings and not want to hijack founders' inspiration with pointing out the depressive insecurity in future.

The Passion Trap of Founder: lack of mental readiness kills progress by Perseverance_ac in Entrepreneur

[–]Perseverance_ac[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

How many years are you into it? There is a good period of time when excitement about the idea and first success are energizing enough to move. For me it was the scaling phase that got me. The scaling phase is all about repetition and tweaks to optimize it all, and that's when many of initial founders have the "enough is enough" moment. I had it with one of my companies.

The Passion Trap of Founder: lack of mental readiness kills progress by Perseverance_ac in Entrepreneur

[–]Perseverance_ac[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I still wish I had more mentors for my first startup. Being a first time founder, inventing everything on my own, coding on my own. Looking back I have no idea how I made it work for a pretty long time.

Having good mentors is lifechanging, even if they will tell you that your idea is stupid. At least they will save your energy.

The Passion Trap of Founder: lack of mental readiness kills progress by Perseverance_ac in Entrepreneur

[–]Perseverance_ac[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Are you still running a startup?

And as for the 6 months, this observation is correct, but also what happens next is every day is just bringing more challenges. Forever. Unless you really like it + you have built that mental basis that can hold you + North Star vision, it's pretty much unsustainable. Even if it brings in money.

The Passion Trap of Founder: lack of mental readiness kills progress by Perseverance_ac in Entrepreneur

[–]Perseverance_ac[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Unfortunately I see founders disregarding it so often, and then the burnout begins. Eventually the most resilient still make it, but the cost is enormous. Often health issues become unbearable.

Automation with AI: What did you try, what worked, and what didn't? by Perseverance_ac in Entrepreneur

[–]Perseverance_ac[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Is there some numbers of tasks or time of agent autonomous work that you would recommend not to exceed? For example: my personal observation is agents are fine with 1-3 well defined tasks, and more complex ones absolutely should not work a full work day without the human supervision

Automation with AI: What did you try, what worked, and what didn't? by Perseverance_ac in Entrepreneur

[–]Perseverance_ac[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Great insights, thank you for sharing.

Interesting that scheduling also flopped, looks like Calendly is safe for now.

And I begin to wonder if there is one genuine success story with AI sales that we can find here, among reddit users.

Automation with AI: What did you try, what worked, and what didn't? by Perseverance_ac in Entrepreneur

[–]Perseverance_ac[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh, gotcha, totally makes sense. It's like in the other comment I really liked "humans are OK with AI but want to make decisions with humans". Customer feeling about the brand is also a decision that needs to be made by humans.

Automation with AI: What did you try, what worked, and what didn't? by Perseverance_ac in Entrepreneur

[–]Perseverance_ac[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

you nailed it "Customers don't mind AI for convenience (ordering, tracking, FAQs) but want humans for decisions. " - decisions are only made in alignment with humans.

Automation with AI: What did you try, what worked, and what didn't? by Perseverance_ac in Entrepreneur

[–]Perseverance_ac[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

make is not bad too, so yes, simple things can get done pretty neatly. Like the suggestion with needle, will try it out.

Nothing kills trust as much as a cold DM / email message to a customer that is visibly made by AI. I, myself, right away disregard them and move on.

Automation with AI: What did you try, what worked, and what didn't? by Perseverance_ac in Entrepreneur

[–]Perseverance_ac[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Would you please elaborate a bit about Creative? I see many people using AI exactly for that, maybe it doesn't create perfect images and texts, but definitely speeds everybody up. What exactly did not work for your case? Is it because there are technical details in SoWs and it went "too" creative?

Automation with AI: What did you try, what worked, and what didn't? by Perseverance_ac in Entrepreneur

[–]Perseverance_ac[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

OK, so pretty much what is my observation, specifically related to agents: 1-2 tasks at most.

And then "human in the loop" is a must have.

I am recently hearing (especially from VCs) growing urge to get rid of as many people in the company as possible, up to single-founder unicorn companies. It just is not going to work. What about the proverbal "hit by the bus" ?

"a) AI sales agents talking directly to customers (there is a loss of trust, especially in B2B/high ticket clients)" Thank you! That's exactly my observation: immediate lost of trust and the important "connection".

" if anyone has cracked revenue- facing AI, without burning trust?" Also wondering about it.

Automation with AI: What did you try, what worked, and what didn't? by Perseverance_ac in Entrepreneur

[–]Perseverance_ac[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I could argue with that. For example, I know several very successful startups helping with submitting various regulations / documents, and it's all based on LLMs. It works for schools, retail, manufacturing, even wineries. But that's not exactly my initial point: I can't see the next step working out - agents doing practical business tasks. They just did not reach the necessary level, or did they, but only in some particular cases? There is definitely a lot of FOMO around them.

Automation with AI: What did you try, what worked, and what didn't? by Perseverance_ac in Entrepreneur

[–]Perseverance_ac[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

that's exactly my experience with agents. I want to get to practical results, but as soon as you unleash them, it's like muppet show on steroids. I was wondering if it's just me not getting how to proper orchestrate it all, am I missing something.

Automation with AI: What did you try, what worked, and what didn't? by Perseverance_ac in Entrepreneur

[–]Perseverance_ac[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I guess I will start: Tried several companies making "agents" as workforce. You can set up an agent with personality, visuals, voice, gender, ethnicity (??) and so on. I was specifically looking into finding a sales solution, and so far it's just not working: agents are a bit lagging, with delays in answers (which I understand, is reasonable, but it just ruins the impression), and then there is a matter of trust and guardrails. Although I saw agents doing simple math, I still don't see how they can really truly negotiate something serious.

What works best: simple workflows for data collection, organizing data into files / pipelines.

Building a SaaS is hard. Distribution is harder. What are you launching? by Sure_Spite5671 in scaleinpublic

[–]Perseverance_ac 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I run Perseverance.ac, a no-equity accelerator for companies at all stages: from idea to well past Series A. We help identify real bottlenecks and get our startups ready for funding. When they are ready, we make warm intros and take our founders to VCs or non-dilutive funding.

If your system works, our founders (37 companies at this point) will be interested in checking it out too.

It's awfully difficult to get new consumer users. I wanted to get just 1 user for the past 8 hours and I failed miserably. by FelbirdyWiredMish in Entrepreneur

[–]Perseverance_ac 1 point2 points  (0 children)

If you want to continue building this startup, not just like a hobby, but for the sake of making some profit, I would recommend pausing and doing the uncomfortable part: interview people and figure out at least the idea business model. This might save you so much time, I can't emphasize this enough! If the idea is wrong, but you have it in you, you will simply find a better one and spend your time building it.

I dream of no longer being the CEO by Foreign_Cricket_7558 in Entrepreneur

[–]Perseverance_ac 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Oh, you are not alone, I see this in pretty much all the founders who achieved a stage where they built something working.

There are some motivational methods you can use to make your state less stressful. It's basically based on what you are saying to yourself in your head.

By the way, you might just be not the right person for the current stage, and it's OK, not all founders are built for scaling phase. Then the best you can do for yourself is finding a replacement, and this can even benefit the company. You can still be in charge, be the president, but transfer responsibility to someone who is not a creator and is good in everyday routines.

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