At the beginning of 2019, I founded and built an amazing startup. At the end of 2019, I left.
Over the next few days, I’m going to write about what I think happened in 2019 that meant that I went from the happiest I’ve ever been in a role to depressed, burnt out, and running away.
These are my viewpoints only, and I’m sure there’s more to the story than I know or that I can represent myself.
The email below is the one I sent my mentor explaining what I believe was the straw that broke the camel’s back. As I write the follow on posts, I’m going to try to document what I think the other inflection points were. In the end, I know that writing this will bring me catharsis and ending, and will hopefully act as a long letter to a future self about the choices I made.
I let Odeko know right before Thanksgiving that I wanted to transition out. I’m going to join Sam in the new year at Reconnect, but keep 1-day per week for Q1 at Odeko to make the knowledge transfer less jarring.
3 things happened at Odeko that made me confident in this direction:
Email to Jean Sini about leaving Odeko
(1) We had the Monday meeting you and I talked about, and I pre-pitched it to ########## and ##########, and across all three touchpoints the plan got reduced from a specific 3-prong approach that I was advocating for to having the whole business focus on a single prong with #### independently running a group for the second prong.
(2) As a result of that, my scope got reduced from January through now in a way where there isn’t a full-time job for me presently (but in a way where I can see that there would be a full-time job in June 2020). Essentially, at some point we will need all 3 prongs, #### will get bored running the 2nd prong, and it would be a natural fit for me to help drive us through #2 and #3. ############## is owning #1.
(3) It became clear that the tension between myself and the engineering leadership had transitioned into full friction, and that was slowing the business down. I advocated very strongly against a set of process changes, and the decision was made to proceed with those changes. It was a bitter way to come to a conclusion in a process that needed to be more collaborative.
I told Sam that we need to get to April, and know that we have a real business. So between now and then, I’m going to put my energies there, and hopefully there’s lots of good news moving forward from the Spring.
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