Whats It Like Going From Startup Ceo To Regular Dude

What’s it Like Going from Startup CEO to Regular Dude? | By Sunil Rajaraman About a 12 months ago, I stepped away as CEO of Scripted.com â€" a company I co-based and led through our Series B. It was an unusually long journey getting Scripted to the stage we reached. We began off in 2008 as a screenwriting software firm in Los Angeles, and grinded out a number of long, exhausting years before getting any traction with Scripted. We had been fortunate to time a number of issues proper (the rise of content material marketing + marketplace companies in general) and I’m happy with what the Scripted staff continues to accomplish with the new CEO. Stepping away as a enterprise-backed startup CEO is a crazy expertise. Here are some of the things I realized up to now year of not startup CEO-ing: You have no idea what you are putting your body through as a startup CEO: The first month of not being a startup CEO, your physique mainly goes into shock. After putting myself via 5 + years of actually constant stress (managing the enterprise/employees, fundraising processe s, hiring, journey, etc, and so on) my body just crashed out. As a comparatively healthy 30-one thing, I found myself towards the top of my time at Scripted with elevated blood strain nearly every day. Another thing that startup CEOs refuse to speak about publicly, however will in non-public settings is how anxiety plays a factor in your day-to-day life. You are constantly feeling “adrenaline-fueled” and that’s what will get you thru the very fact you need to be sleeping 4x extra. My BP went down, and my anxiousness went away after month 1. You don't know how intertwined your entire life is to your startup: This one was significantly exhausting to get over. Everything about your life for the past 5 years was targeted on one individual goal â€" to make your company profitable in any respect prices. You had been ALL IN on doing every thing you could for the company and its workers. But your identity is also deeply intertwined in the startup â€" people knew you as the “Scripted CEO”. Your Amazon Prime account was linked to your Scripted e mail address. It took a number of months to untangle the mess between my personal and skilled life. And in a method I needed to “mourn” the fact I was now not CEO of this company I helped build. Some of your “associates” are no longer your friends: The Bay Area is beginning to exhibit some stunning similarities to the Los Angeles entertainment scene. One day you're in, the subsequent day you might be “out”. CEOs of venture-backed startups with first rate profile in the Bay Area are like rockstars. Once you are no longer in that place, people who used to achieve out to you â€" conferences you used to get invited to â€" a lot of these privileges disappear. The upside to this is that the real relationships endure no matter what. You IMMEDIATELY get ideas for corporations, and they are all actually shitty:I was fortunate sufficient to have Ashu Garg, a GP at Foundation Capital, attain out to me to affix the fir m as an EIR shortly after I left Scripted. I remember my first meeting with Ashu â€" telling him about all of those superb businesses I deliberate on beginning. As an entrepreneur, you think to yourself â€" I even have to do something greater and higher based on the teachings I learned and it has to be RIGHT NOW. Don’t do it. You will find yourself leaping into one thing silly that you're not enthusiastic about. Instead, I took a special approach, and acquired the assets of The Bold Italic â€" a publishing site, which I run while @ Foundation â€" it’s a site that’s already working, and is fun to keep up. It keeps my expertise sharp, whereas not diving in full bore into an organization the place I elevate another $15M. You think about what you'd have carried out in another way: You go through a phase where you consider how you would have managed the enterprise better. You notice that you made some unhealthy hires that sucked the power out of you quite than provide you with ener gy. You realize you would have made a unique business decision or two. But ultimately, you progress on: The one attribute I can say about a lot of the successful folks I know is that after they face adversity, they move on. Whether it’s shifting on from an organization, a personal challenge, a health downside, and so on â€" you find a approach to cope and move on. If you linger and need things might be the best way they once had been, you will in the end fail, be full of resentment, and may’t get to what’s subsequent. I’ve got so much to look ahead to this yr, and I’m excited for what’s ahead. I had an amazing 12 months of reconnecting with family and close friends, and I’m grateful for every thing I even have in my life. (This submit originally appeared on Medium written by Sunil Rajaraman, ex-CEO of Scripted.com) Enter your e-mail tackle: