Dharmesh Shah recalls three brutal moments: hiring his first employee and the weight of responsibility, chronic cash-flow problems that left the company one week from missing payroll, and asking employees to take voluntary pay cuts.
Let's go back to those earlier days. What was the darkest moment as a founder?
When you hire your first employee is like the scariest moments, right? It's like, oh, now like someone other than me and my co-founder are depending on the company now. But the darkest ones are always around just cash flow issues, right? It's like, okay, well, like you're living literally like week to week. You're just 48 hours from like missing payroll. And I've had that multiple times in the first one. And then you go to the employee like, here's what's going on. And we've had people take pay cuts voluntarily. We've paused salaries.
And that's hard, hard stuff. That's gotta be the most brutal moment for an entrepreneur.
I think so. It's like way up there.
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