Feeling like a fraud while doing startups

Impostor/fraud syndrome is quite common amongst quite a few founders I know. I personally believe it's just a cognitive deficiency one has to overcome. As long as it doesn't get in your way, it's OK.

Truth of the matter is, you're not entirely responsible for all of your successes. Time, space, opportunity and many other factors far beyond our control are always necessary.

However, lack of success does not mean you have nothing valuable to contribute. Most "successful" entrepreneurs often attribute their success to "Luck" & hard work. the hard work part is something you can definitely speak to regardless of how the luck part went for you.

Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome

I am no psychologist, but this sounds very much like impostor syndrome, which is by no means the exclusive domain of the startup world. When I was in grad school, the school offered seminars and workshops on it. I never went, but I'm not sure what a seminar is supposed to do for someone who has difficulty recognizing their accomplishments.

I 100% feel like this. I work in the enterprise space and it's amazing how many people have never heard of a MVP. When I tell them that their mobile version of their on-premise software needs to follow a lean approach they usually respond with "so you mean like how we used to build software?!?" When I go through this drill, their eyes light up like I've just told them that the new messiah is coming tomorrow. It's really powerful stuff and while I don't have a single massive success under my belt (but hopefully on my way), I do truly believe it's the way to go, and if it's not, I'll die trying to figure out the right way to get companies to support disruptive technology.

I've personally had many failures in my past, which I've only recently been happy to be very public with people about. My greatest personal success has been the realization that those failures are by far my greatest accomplishments.

I had this same crisis in 2006 after realizing that I've never created a business that generates any significant cash. I figured out I have no right to mentor, do talks, etc of which I was doing plenty. So I completely withdrew and have spent the last 6 years trying to earn the right to mentor again. I'm about there, so will be reengaging starting next year.

Avoid mentors who fall into the following list: Made money off stock options in a non exec role. Made money through talent acquisition exit. VC/Investor experience only. Old money.

First prize is that you get an angel investor who has built profitable businesses. There is no better mentor than someone like this with a vested interest in your success. They are very, very rare and don't like to talk much.

In the pick up community, this is called keyboard jockeying ... basically the blind leading the blind. I think this is extremely prevalent in the start-up world except people don't get called out as often as they should. Just look at half the guys who claim to be experts at lean. For most of them, their biggest success has been their ability to brand themselves as experts at lean.

So while we begin with agreement that at times you feel like a fraud, I think in many cases we are being 'fraudulent' by offering untested, unproven advice. The best guys I know, especially ones who have been successful, say 'I don't know' to a lot of questions. Meanwhile, the armchair experts with a thin history always seem to know the answer.

If you feel like a fraud doing a start up, imagine how it feels making flash games for a living

It's a general problem when you're pursuing social mobility, particularly when you're in an area where there isn't a single well-defined path to success (computing or startups as opposed to medicine or MBA)

It takes many forms, from working with people who've got more faith in me than I do, to working on stuff that sounds like science fiction and dealing with a lot of skepticism until you release the right product to convince people it's fact, not fiction.

This December, I will be speaking to some students that want to pursue a career in tech.

How I have catered to this feeling is this: I told the organizer I would not speak about being a success since I am not yet successful. So I will be speaking about what I know, which is about bringing products to life.

Even then, I still do not feel so comfortable doing it.

A couple comments have suggested this is Imposter Syndrome and it might be a little of that, but additionally it's the opposite. Imposter Syndrome is about feeling like your successes are not your own. This article is about not feeling like your successes are significant enough. Imposter syndrome is about your successes being bigger than you are worthy of accepting responsibility for. This article is about your responsibilities being bigger than you're experienced for.

That understood, I think a lot of this problem stems from our fascination with survivor bias -- only those companies that have big successes. We think big successful exits are where we should concentrate our learning and if we aren't one of those big exits then the experience we have isn't significant enough to help others.

It's like the Don't read TechCrunch article also on the front page right now. Those blogs and even here, we spend a lot of time talking about the exceptional startups. Those with exits (Zynga, GroupOn, Instagram) or those scrappy little dogs fighting the man (AirBnB, Uber), or fighting the 600 LB gorilla (DDG) -- you know, the ones PG would consider "trying to be successful."

The reality is, the vast majority of startups out there are building businesses slowly. They've been at it for 5 or 10 years already and you've never heard of them. Some of those will be acquired or get investment next year and you'll think they are overnight successes. All those thousands, maybe tens of thousands of startups who have made it 5 years are already successes. They are run by individuals who have escaped the machine, the rat race, the enslavement to the corporatocracy! YEAH!

I say that's a success. I say that takes risk. I say that takes understanding the world and what it values and being able to add enough value to support at least yourself, maybe your family, and even some other families.

Every entrepreneur I know with success talks about how they did it all themselves in the beginning. Don't hire until you can't do it all yourself anymore. Wake up, work, go to sleep. Not these tiny population of stories where you get 10 million dollars and then hire someone to do tiny little things that don't really need to be done anyway. I can't imagine paying someone full time to manage a Twitter stream but there are entire companies built around enabling entire teams to work together on a twitter stream! Wow.

That kind of stuff seems like a big waste of time and money to a lot of "real" entrepreneurs. A lot of "real" entrepreneurs don't even know what Twitter is. Or even use the web at all. We could all stand to learn a thing or two from them and none of that knowledge is at TechCrunch. We could also stand to share a lot of the knowledge we have gained never having achieved the success we are constantly reminded the startup world appreciates even though our successes are amazingly awesome when compared to those outside the startup world.

I felt the same during my Masters. I was gulping down papers and books on stuff very new to me and churning out papers at a crazy rate. I was overwhelmed.

When every paper came back with very high grades I actually questioned one of my professors about those grades. I literally said "I feel like I'm faking that I actually know what I'm talking about". She was amused.

Looking back at it: I was working an awful lot, loved the subject, and have a way with words (at least in my native Spanish). So the output was good, what else would I expect?

I don't understand what's so hard about qualifying one's advice. I've given people advice more than a few times in the past, but I usually stress that I may have just gotten lucky, it might not be applicable to their present situation, whatever I've achieved was also thanks to others, etc. As long as I'm open with people about that, I feel very comfortable offering my opinion.

If I passed myself off as an infallible guru, then I'd be a fraud, but there's absolutely no need for me (or anyone else) to do so.

After reading this article I realized that I have the Impostor/fraud syndrome. My co founder on the other hand doesn't suffer from it and attend events, tech meetups and is often invited to speak about startup experience and stuff. I feel very uncomfortable giving advice as our startup is not successful yet.

This seems more like feeling like a fraud while talking about doing start ups before yours take off. This is also the reason I generally avoid going to classes and events for entrepreneurs. I don't really want advice from someone who hasn't done this and been successful.

I think that a useful skill for anyone is to be able to listen to someone's opinion on something and gain information or knowledge from it, without agreeing with what the person is saying or even taking a position on it at all.

This skill that surprisingly many people lack in any capacity.

Better to make money you don't think you deserve than to stay poor because deep-down you don't feel worthy.

Chances are, if you're fresh out of college, you know more about current demand and technologies than the seasoned executives out there.

I wonder if we should draw motivation from our feelings and use them as goads, instead of trying to make them go away.

Maybe there is a way to not merely harvest our insecurity, but use it as motivation?

I always thought there was a dark side to the Force.

Sometimes I too think it is OK to feel like a fraud, because I am actively expanding my comfort zone.

Sometimes I think that I am a fraud who is just reasonably good at rationalizations.

Mostly the latter.