29 August 2026
Manojj and I started Spectrm in summer 2025. We both had spent time working normal jobs after our degree’s. Although I loved mine, I thought I’d try something new. Manojj needed a co-founder, he was my best mate, and I loved coding so joining him was a no-brainer. Part of me wanted to see how long I’d last so I jumped in.
When you start your own company, the initial excitement you feel is exhilarating. The vision you dream up in your head fuels you. Every so often, you glance to the ceiling and see yourself 10 years from now ‘making it’, whatever that means for you. I saw this startup as my first chapter. A tool I could use to learn, build myself, and fund my life post-exit. The vision can only carry you so far since it acts as short-term motivation, rather than drive. Drives comes from a genuine love for the process itself. The ones who fall in love with their problem, who fall in love with the pursuit of changing the world - those are the ones who change the world. The only way to know where you stand on this spectrum is by starting a startup, and see how you feel 6, 12, 18 months in!
Spectrm changed me more than I could have imagined. Below I’ve shared my thoughts and perspectives in no particular order. Technically, I am a failed startup founder so it’s reasonable to think some of my ‘learnings’ were ‘wrong’ and my thoughts on them will change when I am successful.
Startups always have more to do than they have time for. Picking tasks that ‘move the needle’ is critical, and wow, we learned this the hard way. When you’re deciding what to do, and you’re caught up with 1000 things on your mind, usually you go with what feels right. And what feels right, (at least when you’re inexperienced) is something in the way of comfort. You subconsciously reach for tasks that you find easier, or maybe ones you’re familiar with and you convince yourself that this task is useful. You’ll work on the boring stuff later, right?!
You’re told you need to move fast, but now you no longer stop and think about the tasks you’re doing. The next thing you know you’ve spent 8 hours learning colour theory so that you can find the *perfect *colour palette for your product (you have zero users).
I’ve fallen in this trap so many times. We don’t ask ourselves - does this actually move my startup forward? What does forward look like? Will this task directly impact my revenue? Do I have any evidence to support my hypothesis? If I didn’t do this, what would the impact be? How will my startup be in a better place after doing this task?
Questions along these lines usually help you filter tasks that don’t really move the needle. Once you start doing this often, you realise how many tasks on your to-do list are just pure bullshit. I’m yet to master this one.
When things get hard, you look for things to change. At the earliest stages of a startup, the business has nothing but the founders. The founders *are *the startup, and so being fairly introspective, I reasoned that doing internal work on myself, regardless of it was directly correlated with ‘work’ per say, I may see improvements in the business.
At the start, my introspection was intermittent and usually biased to times where something went wrong. I made meaningful gains, but then after 6-9 months, shit got serious. At some point, you usually iron out the low hanging fruit, but the deeper problems tend to stick around and those take a lot more work to overcome.
The day I met Daniel Dippold, my perspective on introspection dramatically changed. As a mathematician, Daniel tracked himself rigorously, reviewing himself daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly without fail. I was fascinated about the way he ‘studied’ himself and decided to give it a try. I tracked every 15 mins of my day, answered a daily-reflection template everyday, and did weekly reviews to understand my process. It blew me away with how much I was learning about myself, just because I was paying special attention to it. It informed the ways I structured my days, it informed the way I communicated with my partner, and it informed the systems I would design to be better.
This only works if you are honest with yourself.
Sometimes we’re scared of the truth. We don’t want to admit that our product sucks; that we overbuilt; that we made the wrong decision; that we need help; or that this idea isn’t working. It hurts because we poured so much of ourselves into this, that we don’t want to face that pain.
If you want it to work you need to build up the courage to look at yourself and admit the truth. It’s hard; it took me a while and no one likes it but it’s necessary for survival. At least if you’re honest about it, you can address it head on, make a change, and move forward.
Some founders lie to their teammates to avoid embarrassment. We all have pride and ego, but I think it’s important for teams to build a low-ego, empathetic relationship where everyone feels comfortable sharing. Each founder will make countless mistakes, but it’s how the two of you respond to them together that matters. A team with trust, respect, and open communication is one that flourishes.
You will go down and when it happens what will you do? How will you react? Who are you when you’re down?
This one is such an interesting topic and I could probably go on for hours about it. I also have so much to learn here, but this is what I’ve learned so far.
There are so many times when you want to quit (so many). One minute everything’s going great, success is inevitable, and the next you’re filled with doubt, insecurity, and fear. You’re pulled down into the darkness and the only one who can pull you out is yourself. Our state of mind has such an impact on the way we show up for ourselves, the way we react to situations, and the way we treat others. When you’re down it’s easy to make rash decisions, treat others badly, and blame the world for unfairness. At the lowest points, your startup needs you the most so how you respond to such situations can really be life or death.
I always found it useful to observe the thoughts I had after a setback; I’d try to understand where they came from and why. It’s not easy but getting a better understanding allows you to change your inner dialog for the better. For me, I needed to be a little more positive to myself, remind myself that its a long game, and to focus on the tasks, rather than the emotions.
In sport, the ones who say on top the longest have build a bulletproof mindset. Cristiano, Djokovic, Nadal, Federer, Kobe, MJ, Tiger woods, Serena Williams etc. They’ve mastered the ability to control their thoughts and emotions even in high pressure situations. Where others may be dwelling on their past mistakes, these athletes move on, and just focus on the task at hand. I think founders can learn a lot from elite athletes.
The mental battle might be one of the biggest reasons to have a co-founder. I couldn’t possibly imagine doing this without Manojj. Depending on where you are in the world, your co-founder might be the only person in your world that can understand what you’re going through. If you’re in Silicon Valley, you’re surrounded by hundreds of people who have gone through exactly what you’re going through, 10 times over. Their wisdom is a lifeline, and their presence gives you a sense of comfort because you know they made it to the other side.
I recently came across this quote that I liked: “True optimism comes from the darkest of the darkness, because there you need it to survive.”
I don’t think I have to spell out why good communication is important. If you’re building something with other people, your highest chances of success are when everyone is aligned on the vision and everyone knows their role. This is established through communication.
The more people I spoke to about Spectrm, whether that was a friend, colleague, or potential customer, the more I learned to pay more attention to their reaction. With customers, it was essential because they don’t always *say *what they’re thinking and this can be problematic if you make decisions based on their words. You can’t blame them though; people would rather be nice than have an awkward conversation, especially with a stranger. But as a founder, it’s your responsibility to extract the truth out of them, whether that’s through improving yourself (asking the right questions, framing correctly, etc) or by reflecting on each and every call - analysing their tone of voice, their choice of words, and their actions (did they actually do what they said they’d do?).
The more calls you can map to outcomes, the more you can spot patterns in their words, body language, and actions. This is a skill that I think I have only scratched the surface on. Although I’ve learned a lot in the last year, I have so so much more to learn and it’s a skill I find fascinating.
Analysing sales calls eventually became a habit - so much so that I found myself analysing conversations I had with friends and family. Sometimes useful, sometimes not!
You cannot achieve the standard work-life balance with a startup, but there of course is a threshold which varies person to person. On one end of the spectrum you can work 16hrs a day, 7 days a week totalling 112 hours per week; and on the other, you can work the conventional 9-5, or 40 hours per wee. For the highest chances of success, you want to maximise the number of hours you spend on your startup *given *that you don’t sacrifice your essentials. Essentials include exercise, family time, social activities, and rest & recovery. Figuring out what your essentials even are is a whole task in itself, but you learn that over time. The great thing is that successful founders come in all different shapes and sizes, and each of them sacrificed different things. There’s no set formula on how much to sacrifice, but you can read other peoples stories and get a good feel for what you’ll likely need to sacrifice.
My co-founder and I used to feel guilty when we were doing tasks that weren’t *directly *startup related, like going to the gym or chitchatting with our families. We soon understood that for us, although they may not directly move the needle, they were essential for longevity. The journey will be tough but I think it should still be fun and you shouldn’t sacrifice things that truly matter and make you happy
Another major lesson that I took more seriously after reading Daniel Dippold’s productivity bible was working with structure.
At the start, we were just full sending everything, working as many hours as we could, doing as many tasks as possible. We’d always be busy with something, but eventually we came to the realisation that we weren’t able to increase our output anymore. The only way forward was to increase our efficiency. Some things that worked for me were:
Set yourself up for success. Design your environment such that you’re optimised for the given task. For example, if I wanted to do deep work for 2 hours, uninterrupted, I would need to be in a distraction free zone, I’d need to get all food and water for the two hour session, and ensure that no one will disturb me. I may also listen to Gamma waves to increase the chances of entering flow state. Who knew that actually trying to succeed, improves the odds of success!
Plan the night before: Remove the friction in the morning of figuring out what you need to do. Instead, have your plan ready so you can execute immediately. It also removes the chance of analysis paralysis.
Plan better. Goals should be clearly defined with suitable output metrics. “Do the frontend” is not a plan. Your plans should also consider the length of each task, with suitable contingency. If say your plan consisted of 10 tasks, and by the end of the day you only accomplished three, either a) you executed incorrectly or b) your plan wasn’t well thought out. I was amazed to discover how bad of a planner I really was, and how planning requires a sense of honesty toward yourself.
Follow protocol & rules. Different work sessions have different rules. Follow a set protocol to build consistency and to help offload mental load. If you have a checklist of everything you need to check through at the end of the day, that’s one less item stored in your head.
Rest & Recovery. Be strict with recovery and intentional with rest. Scrolling doesn’t really rest your brain, it just keeps it fed. One of the most meaningful changes I made was my evening wind-down. I struggled with switching off so I began trialing different ways to switch off, and eventually found a system that worked for me.
My best work came from when I was well rested, refreshed, and with a clear mind. To maximise my week, I’d often focus on my energy levels as I found this was the biggest lever to productive work. With a bad nights sleep, I wouldn’t be able to focus as long, I was slower, less motivated, and definitely more grumpy!
After much experimentation, I figured out what worked for me. Turns out the age old advice to eat well, exercise, and rest was the ‘secret’. I think we all secretly know this, but we just try to find shortcuts anyway. My non-negotiable’s were:
When I hit all of these, I feel at my best; I’m able to be the best version of myself around others and I’m able to work hard but also enjoy my down time.
Regulating my energy was also very important for my quality of life. When I wasn’t resting well, by the time my off-day came around, I was drained. But that off day was the day to catch up with friends and family. Instead of being present and enjoying those moments, I found myself yawing, half asleep. Even my off days were suffering, which made work even worse. That’s why I began taking my diet, exercise, and rest much more seriously.
Half the time, you don’t even know if you’re doing the right thing. Even if it is right, is it the most optimal? At the start, everything feels like it has so much impact that you need to get it right. You’re also hit with so much conflicting advice, it’s difficult to know which is best.
Being somewhat of a perfectionist, I always wanted to be absolutely sure that the decision we’re making is right. I had to shift my mindset to understand that spending time deciding takes away from time putting another step forward.
I’ve learned is to just put it into action; do as many experiments as you can and then go deep on the ones that show promise. Get data points! If you go wrong, at least you learned something and you won’t do it again. Then you’ll get better at decision making and this will be less of a problem.