Lessons of a start-up founder who left Meta and sold many ideas

This test also told is based on a conversation with Evan King, 30 years old, co -founder of startup in Los Angeles. It has been changed for duration and clarity.

I was hired in Meta in 2017 as a software engineer in the integrity team. I loved my job and I had no intention of leaving, but I stopped in 2022

When a product that I had fun with a meta-coloring unexpectedly, I left my six-digit remuneration to go everything on our idea. It was a huge risk and a deeply humiliating experience.

Startup’s life was much more difficult than what I expected. After sold our first product in February 2023, we threw dozens of other ideas before finding a new success. The launch of my first startup was deeply humiliating, but it was an experience that I would not exchange anything because I learned to move on to better ideas earlier and much more.

The stress of responsibility was so much higher than in Meta

When I left Meta, I realized that I had only developed precision on a narrow subset of tasks and that my knowledge of knowledge was fundamentally nonexistent. The growth of the startup was much more difficult than what I expected, and I found myself pretty on myself.

Each problem finally landed on my shoulders, and this weight has taken some time to get used to it. I remember bringing my laptop to a friend’s birthday party, which I have always done in an emergency. Later, I found myself sprinter at home on a Saturday to solve a problem when our main database fell.

Our product has become fairly well known in the web3 space, but we did not see the financial gain, so we sold it in February 2023. It was not the outing that changed the life we ​​were looking for, but it gave us money to finance our future ideas.

After sold our first startup, we were completely without direction

We returned to the drawing board and started using a system to develop new start -up ideas. We spent a day to develop a new idea and will decide if we had enough information and conviction to spend two days there. Then he would grow from there.

We used this process through dozens of ideas, and most of them were our rapids. Some have managed a few months, and we even built a fairly impressive technology that we have sold.

After several months of tests and errors, we took a step back to reassess. We innovated in spaces where we had no expertise, such as construction and trucking. We decided it was time to dive into something we know well – the preparation of Big Tech interviews.

Three false ideas prevented us from moving on to better ideas earlier

Our current startup is a hub for automated AI interviews and the preparation resources for Big Tech interviews. We launched it technically in May 2023, and it has increased since then.

After finding dozens of failed ideas, I realized that there were three lies that I kept telling me who prevented us from moving on to better ideas earlier: “We just need better marketing”, “the product just needs more time to take off” and “a little success means that we should continue to develop”.

I used to have good products, we just needed better marketing. But when you have a good product, even in its simplest form, people will want to use it. I also learned the importance of counterbalanced my excitement about a product with realism as to its success.

I miss the parts of the meta, but I would not come back anytime soon

I used to come back from a working day alongside friends and interact with different people in Meta and be able to sit on my sofa and relax, feeling intellectually and socially stimulated. Now I end a day at home and I feel like I need to see a friend or do something else to feel satisfied.

I would plan to go back to Big Tech, but not soon.

If you have left Big Tech and want to share your story, please send an e-mail to the publisher, Manseen Logan, to mlogan@businessinsider.com.