Just doing it

My career has been split between time at tiny companies and small companies (with a few stints at medium size companies).

Take about half of the last 18 years and I probably worked with teams from 4-10 people. For the other half it's been inside companies ranging from 20 to 1,000 people.

For most of that time my job was to work on product that had some sort of backing. That meant that someone believed in the idea of a founder, and invested money to get the idea going. I then came as an early designer or product manager, and helped to move the idea forward toward product market fit.

That's a great role to be in, and there's a million things you can learn on any given day.

But it's not the same as trying to figure out an idea and see if it has any legs, and doing that without any funding from an external source.

That's different, it's really hard, and frankly it's some of the most challenging work that can be done.

There's an inherent security in working on something that another person already believes in. You show up to work, do your best to move the vision forward, bring your own expertise to it, and then see what happens next. Yes you can be responsible, yes you can have founder mentality, but it's just not the same. The success of the endeavor doesn't rest on your shoulders.

I thought I got that before.

After all, I started a company with several guys at 19 years old, and we hustled to survive and figure out life. There were elements of figuring it out, but ultimately I was trusting to my cofounders at the time to do the actual thinking about what should come into existence, then throwing my weight around making those ideas to come to life.

In talking to a friend recently, I've been pondering the next two years.

The most likely path forward for the rest of my career is that I'll be in supporting roles, taking ideas that someone else had, and doing my absolute best to push it forward and take it to market.

Thankfully it's something I enjoy, and there's so much to keep learning. I don't see that getting old anytime soon.

But, these past few months I've been experimenting with taking ideas and moving them forward from nothing. That's presented a unique challenge opposite anything I've done in the small companies I've supported.

With a tiny startup of one (or in my case trying out ideas with a friend in the evening), the ultimate responsibility of the thing existing rests on your shoulders. There isn't anyone else coming around to check-in, to see how things are going. The product you're making will succeed or fall based on the effort you expend (mixed in with a ton of luck).

So it's been an interesting juxtaposition. Working in my day job to push products forward, but then tinkering in the evenings and trying to figure out how to take all that I know and apply it to non-existent ideas.

If you're in this same realm—someone who is working inside a team, but plays with ideas on the side—I'd encourage you to keep pushing.

In my anecdotal experience, I believe I've been improving as a designer and product person.

When I spend an evening trying to understand a market, see how to bring a product to it, understand what people want and need—that kind of thinking and processing can't help but bleed back into my day job.

And that comes to where I'm sitting today.

Yesterday I was emailing back and forth with a friend, and he shared a somewhat obvious insight. Namely that the small app endeavors I've been playing with are far less likely to becoming something big, and more likely to improve my abilities as a person.

If I continue on this path—day time designer, and evening tinkerer, I'll ultimately satisfy my curiosity, improve my skillset, and be able to better understand the needs of any product I'm building.

This may all be my way of coping with things. We've all heard of those founders whose idea took off and they were able to dive in with all their time and really take it somewhere. If that happens I'm open to it. But the more likely scenario is the path I'm on. Trying each day to build cool things, and enjoying the process along the way.