The Secret To Running A Startup For 5 Years: Show Up Every Day And Work

Today marks five years since we founded MAZ. Here’s what I’ve learned.

Five years. That’s over 15% of my life. If I was going to write a book about it, the chapters would look something like this:

Chapter 1: Find a need and fill it
Chapter 2: Get awesome co-founders
Chapter 3: Building software is really hard
Chapter 4: Selling software is even harder
Chapter 5: How to build a network from scratch
Chapter 6: Building a killer team is literally everything
Chapter 7: Foster a culture of people who care
Chapter 8: Do crazy outlandish things if you want to win customers
Chapter 9: Raising money sucks
Chapter 10: You’re not building a product; you’re building a company

But this is not a book, so I will summarize instead. It’s actually way simpler than all that: Show up every day and work your ass off.

And then do it again tomorrow. And the day after that. And after that.

Keep doing that, for five years, and then you will have a startup that is five years old. It takes nothing more, but importantly, nothing less.

Just keep working. That’s the secret. Show up. And work.