Mastering Delayed Gratification for Long-Term Success as a Founder
How delayed gratification harms your day-to-day prioritization as a startup founder, and my strategies for navigating it.
Welcome to A Founder’s Life for Me! I’m Alek, and I provide practical recommendations on how to build your company (or career) based on my experiences building tech companies. To learn from all past and future posts, please subscribe below.
Why I’m writing this now
At the start of 2024, I wrote about the “Four Critical Components of Setting Great Goals.” In that article, I set my goals for the year and outlined the strategies I’d use to achieve them. I’ve continued with the planned behaviors I estimated would achieve my desired outcomes. But, when I look at my desired measurable outcomes, I’m reminded that the life of a founder is not one of instant gratification.
As a founder, gratification is like a rainbow after a storm—navigating through the darkness is essential, and when the skies finally clear, the desired outcome isn't assured. However, when it does materialize, it evokes a profound sense of satisfaction, rekindling a flicker of hope.
You’ll leave this article with:
a deeper understanding of how delayed gratification impacts the life of a founder
my strategies for addressing the challenges of delayed gratification in startups
Please enjoy, and if you want to stay tuned for similar content in the future, consider subscribing below.
100 sales conversations, 0 customers.
In “Four Critical Components of Setting Great Goals,” I outline my goals for SolidlyAI sales. I assumed that, for every conversation I start, there’s a 5% response rate and a 5% conversion rate, given that someone has responded. Given those assumptions, there is a 0.25% chance of someone becoming a paying customer when I initiate a conversation or a 99.75% chance of that person not becoming a paying customer. The probability equation is pretty simple, and it works out to:
Where “n” is the number of conversations started.
I’m 11 weeks into my goal of starting eight conversations per day, and there were several weeks where I fell short for one reason or another.1 As of now, I’ve started 125 sales conversations (n=125). Given that number of conversations, the odds I’d find at least one paying customer by now are only 26.87%.
Eight months after spinning up the sales pipeline, I'll have a customer.
How many conversations do I need to initiate to have a 90% chance of at least one paying customer? For those who remember their algebra, if I want a 90% chance of finding at least one paying customer, the equation above simplifies to:
This results in n = 919.88, meaning that I have to initiate over 900 conversations to have a 90% chance of finding at least one paying customer.
I’ve initiated 125 conversations, so I have 795 to go. Assuming I can continue with my goal of eight new sales conversations daily. I’d need to work for 100 days to have a 90% chance of finding at least one paying customer. I’m writing this in mid-March 2024, which puts the 90% chance of finding a paying customer estimate in early August 2024.
The impact of delayed gratification.
Humans want instant gratification. We want as close as possible to instant rewards for our work. But I’m living in a world where I’ll need to work for over half a year for a 90% chance of getting one reward. Have you ever been in a similar situation? How did you feel when you weren’t even sure if the gratification would come?
On any given day, I can put 1-2 hours into sales for SolidlyAI and see no impact. It feels unsatisfying, and like I’m wasting my time. These feelings are part of why I’ve struggled to maintain my eight new conversations per day goal, even though it’s usually the highest-value task I could be doing.
Two strategies to combat delayed gratification
There are two main strategies I’ve implemented in my daily struggle against delayed gratification:
(#1) Celebrate the small wins
I don’t have any paying customers for SolidlyAI yet, but I have several free trials running. It’s easy to feel like “I’ve made no progress” when I look at “paying customers” as the only success criteria. So, I need to expand my definition of success to include some of these smaller wins. Winning your first users is a huge success, even if they aren’t paying yet. So, even though free trials aren’t the desired outcome, I celebrate them. As a solo founder, my reward is an early, guilt-free sign-off for the day.
(#2) Reward the behavior inputs
In “Four Critical Components of Setting Great Goals,” I discuss the importance of a simple accountability system. In addition to these accountability systems, I’ve also started using systems to reward myself for simply putting in the effort.
I built a simple app on a Friday afternoon to reward myself for spending time on activities that don’t feel inherently rewarding. The "LevelUP" app rewards me for spending time on activities with a superficial level tracking system. It allows me to map different apps or websites I use to various skills. For example, my “Business Development” skill tracks my time in apps like LinkedIn, Alek’s 2024 CRM—Google Sheet, and SolidlyAI Demo—Google Slides.
As I spend time on sales-related activities, I watch my sales skills grow. I’m currently level 26!
Simply associating a small reward with the time I spend on activities, like SolidlyAI sales, has led to much higher satisfaction from working on them. And that’s with a reward as simple as a fun sound and seeing my level increase over time.
If you’re interested in trying the LevelUP app, please email me at newsletter@alekhagopian.com. I plan to start sharing it with others in April 2024.
Mastering Delayed Gratification for Long-Term Success as a Founder
Sales for early-stage startups is an arduous process with significantly delayed gratification. As I’ve worked on SolidlyAI, delayed gratification has made it hard to incentivize spending time on sales-related activities.
Recommendation: To master delayed gratification for long-term success, find opportunities to:
Celebrate the small wins, even if they aren’t the outcome you hoped to achieve
Reward the behavior inputs by giving yourself credit for your time and effort.
If you'd like to discuss how to apply this to your work, please email me at newsletter@alekhagopian.com.
I did not follow through on the eight conversations per day goal in February. There were good reasons not to, but I won’t delve into those in this article.