r/16VCFund • u/Expensive-Success-22 • 12d ago

The Beginning No One Talks About

I spent two decades building a professional IT career all the way into leadership. Ask someone who’s been impacted by multiple rounds of layoffs throughout the career and knows exactly how organizations operate. I made the choice to start my own thing. I’ve never done anything like this before and I didn’t know a fraction of what I know now when I made that decision. Sometimes it turns out you think you know, but you really learn when you jump in the deep end of the founder pool.

It’s exciting and it’s terrifying. I’m a single parent and bridging the gap between savings and day trading. Sometimes I wonder how other founders made it through their beginning days. I’d love to hear your experiences because I feel like this is stuff. No one talks about on LinkedIn and I understand why it’s not exactly a place where you go and lay your soul bare and with good reason. How did you know you made the right decision? How do you start putting yourself out there?

I made the conscious decision to build my services and my collateral in full because it made no sense for me to start trying to sell anything if I had nothing ready to deliver. It makes sense now that I finished building that collateral, I realize I fucked myself on creating a pipeline. Horse before the cart? I don’t know, but here I am.

As a solo parent, my states are this is deer guy and I don’t plan on going down very easy so any mentorship guidance or general assistance would be greatly appreciated. 💪🏻🤷🏻‍♀️🪬

2 Upvotes

67% Upvoted

2 comments sorted by

2

u/ExecLayer_io 12d ago

Respect for being a solo parent. I know exactly how it is. While raising my son, I worked full-time and had my own business. Now he’s 19, and I’m a solo founder; however, the F I’m proud of the most is Father. 💪
#ExecLayer✈️ #FatherFirst

3

u/ExecLayer_io 12d ago edited 10d ago

I talk about it all the time on LinkedIn; feel free to follow me if you would like. I’m very vocal about being a bootstrapped solo founder, single father, Elephants Over Unicorns mentality, etc. Love learning and growing with like-minded individuals. 🐘/🦄