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On a recent work trip and unable to sleep, I was flipping through the channels when I stumbled upon Late Night with Seth Meyers, who happened that night to be interviewing the show’s former host, the legendary Conan O’Brien. As a fan of the tall, goofy comedian, I paused my channel surfing just in time to hear him share with Meyers the philosophy that guided him throughout his incredibly long and successful career:
“There’s a giant orchestra, there’s a lot of noise and I’m just banging my triangle. Is anyone even hearing me?” says O’Brien. “And this sounds crazy, it’s like, some Buddhist idea. But if you just stay true to what you believe in, and you keep doing it with purpose, eventually, they’ll only hear the triangle.”
Hearing this, I was immediately cast back to the early days of starting my company, Jotform.
I’m a proud solo founder now, but that wasn’t always the plan. In fact, for years I’d intended to start a business with a close friend. He was 10 years older than me, he was more experienced and we had talked endlessly about launching a company together. We had a verbal agreement: 50/50 partners. No egos — just mutual trust and a shared dream.
But when the time finally came to take the leap, everything changed. He told me that someone had advised him to take 51%. That one person always needed to be “in charge.” It wasn’t a suggestion — it was an ultimatum.
I didn’t even hesitate. I walked away.
It was one of the hardest decisions I’ve made as an entrepreneur. But it was also the best one. Here’s why.
Related: The Professional Breakup — How to Oust a Co-founder Legally and Smoothly
The power of sticking to your principles
Walking away from that partnership was tough — not just as an entrepreneur, but as a person. It wasn’t merely a business split; it was the unraveling of a shared vision, years in the making. I was suddenly on my own, without a partner to lean on and no one to share the weight of what I was about to build.
Conventional wisdom holds that co-founders are necessary for a startup’s survival. Founding a company solo is a “vote of no confidence,” the computer scientist and entrepreneur Paul Graham wrote in 2006. “It probably means the founder couldn’t talk any of his friends into starting the company with him,” he said. “That’s pretty alarming, because his friends are the ones who know him best.”
Yikes. I don’t actually think that advice ever held much water, and with the rise of automation and AI, I firmly believe you need a cofounder less than ever. Still, the fact remains that startups test your resolve in a thousand little ways, and the boundaries you set in those early days become your foundation. If that foundation is cracked, the pressure will only make it worse.
That decision also taught me something essential: Sticking to your principles doesn’t always feel like a win in the moment. In fact, it often feels like a loss of opportunity, momentum and connection. But over time, the cost of compromising what you want is far greater.
Related: The 9 Leadership Principles That Carried Me From the Sidelines to the Suite
Identify your values early
The split in partnership wasn’t the only disagreement my co-founder and I had. We also didn’t see eye to eye on the direction the company would take. In the course of planning our business, it became evident that we had developed different visions — he wanted to consult for other companies; I wanted to build something new. His vision didn’t excite me, and mine didn’t excite him. One of us would ultimately have had to make compromises we didn’t like.
So, as depressed as I was at the dissolution of our plan, I also felt a sense of relief. When you’re starting a company, there are so many forces that threaten to derail your vision. That’s why it’s so helpful to define your values early — the non-negotiables that form the bedrock of your business and your motivation for building it. I like the advice offered by career coach Irina Cozma, who writes in Harvard Business Review that clarifying your values takes both conscious effort and time.
“Depending on your journey, your values might stay constant over time or might change based on new events and information,” wrote Cozma. Check in with yourself each year to ensure that what was once important to you still is. And if it isn’t, don’t be afraid to re-evaluate.
Knowing my values has guided me through some of my most confounding challenges, like how to grow, when to hire and what products to build. They’ve kept me on track and away from the lure of outside investments or opportunities that ultimately wouldn’t serve the company. Splitting with my cofounder gave me a chance to establish what mattered early on, and became the blueprint for how I built the company I have today.
When you know what you stand for, decision-making gets a lot easier. You may still be banging your triangle in a noisy orchestra — but you’re doing it with clarity, purpose and the confidence that eventually, your sound will cut through.
On a recent work trip and unable to sleep, I was flipping through the channels when I stumbled upon Late Night with Seth Meyers, who happened that night to be interviewing the show’s former host, the legendary Conan O’Brien. As a fan of the tall, goofy comedian, I paused my channel surfing just in time to hear him share with Meyers the philosophy that guided him throughout his incredibly long and successful career:
“There’s a giant orchestra, there’s a lot of noise and I’m just banging my triangle. Is anyone even hearing me?” says O’Brien. “And this sounds crazy, it’s like, some Buddhist idea. But if you just stay true to what you believe in, and you keep doing it with purpose, eventually, they’ll only hear the triangle.”
Hearing this, I was immediately cast back to the early days of starting my company, Jotform.
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