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Two entrepreneurs named Adrian with completely different approaches to building companies.
One bootstrapped his way to success, the other raised venture capital and navigated the high-growth startup world. Each episode, they share raw, unfiltered conversations about the realities of entrepreneurship from opposite sides of the funding divide. Get insights you won't find anywhere else about what it really takes to build a business.
[00:00:00]:
Hi, this is Adrian and I'm a Bootstrap founder.
[00:00:08]:
Hi, this is Adrian and I'm VC Backed founder.
[00:00:10]:
and this is "Two Adrians Walking Into a Startup.
[00:00:15]:
Man, man, today it was such a stressful day. Yeah, it's hot outside. How do you deal with stress?
[00:00:26]:
Oh, that's a really hard question for me because I feel a lot of stress in my entrepreneurial life. So stress, it's really part of my life and managing my stress feels sometimes really, really difficult because you have multiple stressor factor every day. Every day. So you have factors that came from investor, factors that came from your employee, factors that came from product deployment features, delayed factors that came from customers. Basically a lot of external factors that influence your, your stress. So for, for me what actually works, it's kind of having some systems to manage my routine. For example, have a system so every three, five days per week going to the gym to reduce stress through physical training or try to control the sleep quality, it's another.
[00:01:42]:
Okay, let's get more specific. Let's start with today, how you feel now. What is currently stressing you like right now except this podcast maybe and like oh, the camera maybe. But like before the podcast, like you know, I guess you were working a bit today what is stressing you was the what happened today that stressed you, for example?
[00:02:02]:
Yeah, today I worked at a new product that you are building and I'm really stressed about the time of the release because it's really important to launch fast the new product and still I'm feeling I didn't figure out all things necessary to launch. So I'm feeling stressed because I'm not 100% sure about how this version will look at the launch.
[00:02:39]:
So what the stressor here, Forget it. Is it the failure of not launching or failure because if you don't launch, you failed the stress because you might fail because you didn't launch. The inaction is the failure also in this particular case?
[00:02:54]:
No, it's not. It's not about the don't launch because will happen sometimes. It's about how long will take the entire process to launch because for me I feel the time, it's really, really different. For me the time moves really fast. So I feel totally different for, I don't know, another person outside of the project. So yeah, for me the moment of the product launch, it feel really, really stressful because I want to launch really, really fast.
[00:03:41]:
Now because this is your second product, right? This is something new. Is the stress level like equal? How do you deal with. Because this is not Your first time when you experience this particular stress, right? Yeah, like I would assume like for example, when I did public speaking the first time I was like, I'm so scared I'm gonna piss myself. And now I'm like, yeah, it doesn't matter if it's 1000 people. Maybe I get, I don't even get like fear or stressed. I'm like, oh, I'm excited. You know, maybe I experienced the emotion slightly different this time. And I'm questioning has stress changed for this particular case?
[00:04:19]:
No, stress didn't change during the time. What changed was more about the things that usually stress me out in the past. Right now I feel less stressful because I learned how to deal with with kind of specific situations. So managing different stressful situations multiple times, you also learn to understand it's not so stressful as you expected at the first time. So overall the old situations stress me out less right now. But every time new situations appears so the stress level remain the same but it's more influenced by the new kind of stressful factors that appears not necessarily the same stressful factors.
[00:05:22]:
Let's maybe go through your history. So I guess the beginnings like oh, it's a new project, maybe you're naively excited about stuff and then I guess you were stressed because like oh, will people buy it? You know, will, will the launch be successful, etc. Yeah. Yeah. Then I guess what later on came I would assume is oh, pressure from investors. Am I going to disappoint them? Maybe there's a pressure which came after about so performing well right overall and am I doing, am I good enough, etc. So like tell us like your history of like as I guess some of the things I guess are true for you. But let's break it down, how stress evolved over time.
[00:06:06]:
Yeah, at the beginning stressful to manage this relationship with the investor was higher because was for me the first time when I get an investment from a VC fund. So I don't had any type of prior experience with managing investors relationships. But after almost four years of having a VC in my company right now I feel like really chill in managing their board meetings with with them. So I'm very stressful, stressed out about the relationship with the investors. Also in the in the past I was stressed about how we can market the product, how we can identify our go to market strategies, how we can promote our product, how we can sell, how we can price the product. I was really stressed about these topics. Now I'm not at the same level of stress related to these topics because I also have the experience about how to do the things. Now I am more stress about how fast I move with the implementation because three, four years ago the market wasn't moving so fast right nowadays.
[00:07:33]:
But today the entire market was changed. The AI automation changed the entire development process and the speed of the market. So it's kind of new approach, new market. AI companies right now means totally different compared with what means an AI company three, four years ago. So it's more stress related to the how fast you identify the product to build for the pain and how fast can you deliver that, that product. But after that process and after you really know what exactly to build in the first version, in the mvp, everything else I kind of really confident about how to figure out the pricing, the go to market strategy, the investor relationship and so on.
[00:08:34]:
I see, I see, I understand. Yeah, I mean, I guess for me it's a similar journey. In this particular case the investor was me, I guess so I don't know. I was checking my bank account for how much money I have. That's my investor meeting with my banking app. But I think, yeah, I mean most of. So the pressure which I constantly have is the pressure to perform, am I doing enough? And the reason why I feel it is because I know what's important for the business. However, because I'm wearing multiple hats in my business and you know, not.
[00:09:16]:
There are things which you still can't have to do though. They're not important, but you need to do them. Like for legal compliance, for example, you know, doing bookkeeping. Right. You have to bring all the invoices for your, for your account.
[00:09:30]:
I love the process.
[00:09:31]:
Yeah. Yeah. And like there are certain things you have to do and if you have limited resources, you can't really delegate everything. So you really like, especially in the beginning it was exciting but also overwhelming because I had to, I was stressed because I had to learn a lot of skills. I had, you know, from cleaning the floor to being AI researcher and everything in between. And it was cool because I was learning skills, but it was very frustrating and stressful because you know, when you learn something from the beginning and you know you need to be good at it, there's stress because of that. Right. You're maybe itself inflicted stress.
[00:10:10]:
And I am definitely guilty of putting a lot of internal pressure to myself. I'm 100% guilty of that. But at the same time, if I wouldn't do it, how you still have to. Okay, fine, I won't stress myself, but I still have to Become good at it. And the reason I think everything is stressing is because you know, you feel it in your guts that if you're not going to move fast, you're going to get fucked. It's that simple. So in that particular case, it's hard to not. That's the stress, which I guess I became better to deal with it.
[00:10:43]:
But. And I guess as you said, similar to you, things which repeat over time because you get better at it because they're not so new for you. Those situations stress me less. So I guess what's stressful, if I would compress it into one thing. New situations where you feel like you have no control are stressful. And I think how do you deal with that? And over time I think I just stopped giving shit. I think that's what happened. I like if, if I just gonna fuck it up and like I'll fuck it up and it's fine.
[00:11:19]:
And most time. Yeah, I think that's a good mindset though. There is one thing which has never changed in the start of my company. I do not like. Sorry, I'll rephrase. I hate bureaucracy. Oh yeah, I know, I don't like it. For example, bookkeeping.
[00:11:41]:
Our favorite activity for both of us, I would assume is. I think I never liked bureaucracy since I was a child. But it's stressful because it's like I'm so busy running my business. You already know how much I owe you. Why do you need this extra information for me? Yeah, like you already know the number. Just tell me, like just give me a number. Why do I need to bother contact you? You already know everything about my private life, Mr. Secret Services.
[00:12:18]:
What do you need from me more?
[00:12:20]:
Yeah, I think I lost around half a day per month just for the bookkeeping. And it's really, really I feel how I lost my life. Searching for the invoice. Upload the invoice in the bookkeeping platform. And yeah, it's a hateful process. Or when you have to go to the bank, update your information. Waiting in a queue, an infinite queue to speak with a person. You don't have options to upload or update your information online or I don't.
[00:13:03]:
Know, maybe getting anxiety. No. While talking. Please stop this. Let's change subject because this is overwhelmingly. I can't handle it. Yeah, fine. Yeah, you don't need to make your point.
[00:13:16]:
Bureaucracy is bad. I think our viewers definitely or listeners definitely agree.
[00:13:20]:
It's clear for everyone, especially if you are living Romanian and interact with, I.
[00:13:25]:
Think in Eastern Europe in general. I think every Eastern European country is very bureaucratic. Yeah. The only lucky ones are Estonians, I think.
[00:13:33]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, it's really, really, really bad. But how do you manage the, the stress situation?
[00:13:43]:
So I think it was a journey how to deal with stress. Right. And it also depends on during what phase in the startup. So if you ask me like a short answer, what would be asked, like doing sports, just disconnecting is the best way to overcome stress. Like just go away from the stressful situation, go for a walk, you know, touch grass. And that's basically the summary of this. But I think I will engage and give you a more detailed answer if that's fine for you. So what helped is what a lot of things were stressing out is because I wasn't performing well, I wasn't satisfied how much I did that day and because I guess I was burned out maybe a bit or something like that.
[00:14:29]:
So I need to, basically I was like, you know, I could do better in that day. I'm talking here specifically for deep work. Right. When you code, when you do AI research, like when you do more things where require deep focus. And I was disappointed a lot myself and that stressed me out. Again, self implied stress, but whatever. Right, let's continue with that, with that issue. So what helped is first controlling my nights, basically controlling going to sleep early or relatively early.
[00:15:06]:
I didn't care about when I went too much sleep, but it was very important that I slept eight hours. And ideally in those eight hours it was quality sleep. So, you know, having like an eye patch, see, have the room as cold as possible. Like I was sleeping in winter with the window open and that felt amazing. Yeah, I won't talk more about that, but yeah, cold air. I think I heard from one, someone did it. I did it as well. Totally fine.
[00:15:39]:
Yeah. What also helped for my mental performance was meditation. I'll be more specific. So in the beginning, for the first year up to the second year, I was doing this thing called the Miracle Morning. There's a book about this, there are multiple books about morning routines. But the miracle Morning is in essence the following. You basically do some physical activity for five minutes, you know, to bring your heart rate up, you meditate, you journal, you have a vision board talking think about future. Maybe there was one more step, do some reading maybe.
[00:16:17]:
And that's about it. Well, I can tell you my version of it. So what I was doing was first I woke up and depending how I felt, I would do either some basic stretches and maybe five Push ups, whatever. Like, just to wake up. It was very important that it would, like, you know, bring my heart rate up. So mostly I would do some squats and something quick, and then I would go. This was in the first two years of my company, so later I did not do this exact routine. Then I would go to the.
[00:16:49]:
To a cold shower. I love cold showers. But yeah, I would just go to shower. Go to cold. Immediately press up, do right sound like beatbox already. Like, yeah, like that. And I would then pat myself dry and then I would go pray and meditate. What I would.
[00:17:15]:
The meditation. I would use headspace. I found headspace very effective. And in the past, I would do like 20 minutes meditations. And yeah, after that I was doing journaling. I don't journal anymore, but I was journally. I had this. I think it's called the five minute journal or something like this, where it's like predefined questions and you just answer them in the morning and evening.
[00:17:45]:
And then I was basically just thinking, okay, what I'm gonna do today and then start working. Yeah, I tried to do like, vision boards. I don't. I don't know. I feel like, so cringe. I don't know. Like, what do I put? Like, I don't have. I don't care if I have a.
[00:18:02]:
Well, I put a fancy car. I don't like cars. Like, it's. I don't care what car I drive. It's. Is it reliable? Except, like, I. I don't like, I know what to put the vision board. Plan your life, bro.
[00:18:12]:
I don't even want to today. What do you mean? About in the future. I can assume what I want, but I don't. Do I really know what I want? Barely many people know what they really want. Like, oh, I want the yacht. Do you really want yacht? Or do you want to rent one weekend yacht and then that's it because you're bored. Like, sitting like a duck in the water. So I escaped, like, the vision or like all this.
[00:18:35]:
You know how it's called this book, think and grow Rich, like, mindset. Like this kind of like, I don't believe in that shit. Like, I read that book and manifestation. Like, I know I just do. I don't manifest. Yeah. So that helped for sure. Because somehow controlling the morning, at least until early afternoon, I was good.
[00:19:03]:
However, that was not always possible. And I'm going now go to my second phase, which was my most stressful startup phase, which I think was, you know, the second to third year during that time I was working basically three jobs at the same time. I was because clean voice until recently was just something which I was doing on the side. And I was really taking any income from the company because it was barely any money, right. So it wasn't worth to pay yourself a salary. So I was basically working, I think as a data scientist. I was also teaching at university on the side. I got the opportunity to teach at university.
[00:19:49]:
I did like some free online course online and some professor did them and they're like, hey Adrian, you want to teach? So it was cool thing. So I was teaching at university and I also was doing clean voice. The morning routine was only cold shower, meditation here and there. That's it, no journaling, nothing. None of that. There's no time for that. But the cold shower was there for sure. And then it still wasn't enough like for the morning routine.
[00:20:25]:
Like I was still overwhelmed. Especially in the evening, I was overwhelmed. Now I was going to the gym, you know, I'm still going like three times per week to the gym. That was basically a thing. But my nutrition was bad overall, it's whatever I could get my hands on and I had to do better to deal with my stress. So okay, morning routine. There was not so much time for it. I did some of it helped a bit, but I instead, like instead of burning out at around 2 in the afternoon, I would burn out already at like 11 or 12.
[00:20:56]:
So definitely the energy span. And I was like done. I felt like, because you know so many things at the same time. And also small tangent I want to say before I continue. I think like entrepreneurship, doing a bootstrap, I think it's a luxury, I think because like if you have family, kids, right, you can maybe do it. But it's not so easy as, you know, without having kids, you know, or being young, right. They have more energy, I assume than if you're in your 50s. So like, oh, you can do it, bro.
[00:21:35]:
Everybody can do is a luxury. It is something like a privilege and depending of course, type of business. But it's definitely something you should consider because it's definitely stressful by doing the bootstrap way, if you have investors, right, you don't need to have three jobs. You can have one job and being a father, for example. But yeah, bootstrap is definitely might be impossible, right? So back to the subject. So I did then gym, you know, three times per week. But it was still not enough. I needed something more intense.
[00:22:13]:
Now I'm going to open a tadoop subject and because most founders don't talk about this and this is about drugs. So I generally don't take drugs. I tried twice weed in my life. So I was, you know, friends. Like, oh, you want to smoke? Like, yeah, okay, I'll take a seat. But I never like, you know, I don't know what's like getting high or something. Like maybe like I felt some fuzziness, but that's it. Like I didn't.
[00:22:41]:
I was not interested in, you know, getting high or something like this. I tried mushrooms and I think I never took a high doses. Like, you know, here people taking like, like ego death or something. I never experienced that. Like just a small amount. And I heard, you know, like trying to deal with my stress better. I heard like, oh, you can do micro dosing, right? And I was doing like m dosing. I didn't felt anything.
[00:23:09]:
It's assuming it helps neuroplasticity. It's up a bit. Like mentally it was a bit better. Like I was more mentally more flexible, which definitely help with the stress. But it wasn't like, you know, magical. Now here's what happened. So a friend of mine, he brought truffles. So there was not so not mushrooms, but like magical truffles.
[00:23:32]:
I guess you can like, I think in Europe the law is interesting. You can, you cannot. In Netherlands you can buy them, but I think in Europe you cannot buy them, but you can grow yourself. Like you see ads on Instagram and stuff like that. So anyway, he brought me some and I was, you know, doing. Taking them like every two days, small amount, etc. And after a while I took one and had a funny taste. I didn't thought about it too much.
[00:24:03]:
Two hours later, I had the worst panic attack of my life. I felt like I had a cerebral attack, like it was attacking my brain. And my heart rate was over 120 for three weeks and I really completely burned out. That was really like stop completely. It was a hard time. And yeah, I don't take any drugs at all. That's my only drug experiences, nothing more, nothing less. And yeah, because you're dealing, you're trying to overcome this symptom and you didn't focus on core problem.
[00:24:46]:
And you need to also change your perspective a bit and you need to be realistic. How much can you really achieve? Okay, you're stressed because you cannot achieve it, but etc. That said, I can say something about sports, which definitely help with the stress. So over after that period where, you know, I recover from, you know, drugs basically, right, it was like A month. I said, okay, no more drugs, nothing clean. And I tried to find more like extreme sports. So I was going to gym, but it was not enough to deal with stress. I then went aikido from all of the things and I thought that would help, you know, Aikido's like risk control.
[00:25:26]:
It was boring, right? And I talked to a friend of mine, he's a professional MMA fighter. Like, hey, you know, I'm doing aikido. Like you're doing Aikido, bro.
[00:25:35]:
Really?
[00:25:35]:
From everything you could do, you know, jiu Jitsu, whatever, you're doing this. And it didn't really help. Like it helped a bit, the aikido, because you're with people, etc. And it didn't really help so much. And I, my friend invited me to go to the MMA gym. It's like, look, you don't need to take anything. I give everything for you. You can fight at the gym, like train and see if you like it.
[00:26:01]:
I go there, you know, first day training, right? Boxing, a bit of grappling, right? And after the training was like one hour and a half or two hours, something like that. I was tired, of course, because, you know, wasn't used to this. And I was like, you know, thank you, bro, it was great. Thank you for the training. I'll come next time. As I said that, he's like, you're leaving, motherfucker. We just started what happened. Everybody left, some of the professional fighters remained, and we did like another one hour and a half of hit training.
[00:26:43]:
And I was completely exhausted, right? But that evening when I went home for the first time, after I know, two, three years running, the startup or in general, I felt peace. I went home for the first time really like totally relieved and relaxed and stable. And yeah, I continued then of course going mma, right? And so on. Now I haven't because I moved, but I'm joining, I will join our, at least Jiu Jitsu because I have a Jiu Jitsu next to my co working place. So I'll go there. But yeah, but it doesn't matter. So what is the whole lesson here about dealing with stress? I don't know. I'm gonna tell you that sports help, MMA helps.
[00:27:36]:
And you know why MMA helps? I tell you, I was thinking like, why this is working and not, you know, going to the gym?
[00:27:41]:
Why?
[00:27:43]:
Well, if you go gym, you're not really focused. I mean, yeah, you're like, when you do your heavy squat, like you've got like 100 something kilogram on your back. And you're going to squat. You know, there's real danger there because you can literally break your back. But when you're not doing the exercise, when you're not there, maybe you look on your phone, maybe you're like, okay, I'm waiting between the reps. You're not focused the whole time. In mma, if you don't focus, you're dead. You have to be present.
[00:28:16]:
You have to be present because one moment you're. Especially if you go sparring, you have to be fully immersed. You cannot be like, chill. No, you have to be there, else you're going to get fucked up. So I think there's the idea of like being my. Like, it's basically meditative a bit because you're there the whole time, right? You're focused. And you're also doing something very tiring, right? And I think that's the combination really helps you de stress somehow. And not recommending it to anyone, I'm just saying that work for me.
[00:28:49]:
You do your bro, right?
[00:28:50]:
Yeah, yeah. So if you don't want a really high intense training. Also, the same feeling I am having at my piano lessons. So it's the same feeling because I have to be 100% focused there. I have to be focused to remember the notes, remember how I can play the song. So it's the same feeling when I am 100% focus there and nothing else. And yeah, at the gym, it's how we said you can stay on the phone if you don't leave your phone in the change room. But nobody did that.
[00:29:35]:
So, yeah. And for me, it's kind of similar. I observe the training. The gym really helps me a lot because you can decompress, you can dissociate between the daily stress and another part of your life. Because business or startup, it's not your entire life. But sometimes it feels it's our entire life, but in reality it's not. Our entire life exists life after, after business. So, yeah, really, really helps me me a lot.
[00:30:15]:
But the really challenging part here, it's okay, everybody knows you have to eat well, you have to sleep well, you have to train, you have to, I don't know, have creative activities that it's a common knowledge, everybody knows. But what you can manage to maintain that habit. Because when you are in stressful situations, maintaining a routine or habits, it's really, really difficult. And I feel on my own journey, I have multiple moments when I fail at doing my routine, when I fail to go regular to gym, when I fail to eat well, when I fail to sleep well and all that things result in a low performance for, for me. So that I think is the real challenge how we can manage to maintain a routine that we discover works well for, for us because everybody knows how to be less stressful but how we can maintain these things. So yeah, that's, it's, it's open questions. I don't have an answer. I didn't figure it out how to solve that problem in maintaining my routine.
[00:31:46]:
High stressful period. Probably will take me another few years to figure it out. But now what do you do to relax?
Adrian Spataru [00:32:01]:
I mean the honest answer I guess is work more to relax. But same for me. But I mean for Jim, like I mentioned, Jim mma definitely something which helped, right. As I told my story. I think what I enjoy doing, like if you ask me like if I don't have to run a company or what would I do, right? Because I think that's basically is the answer to the question.
[00:32:25]:
Yeah, yeah. If you don't have the pressure to make money to run a company or any pressure in life, what you will really do?
[00:32:32]:
I would do music. I actually When I was 13, I was making like electronic music until like 20 something. I had a story that like getting almost accepted to a label. And yeah, that's another story for another time. But yeah, music definitely. I really enjoy producing music. What else? I like doing parkour. Yeah, yeah, it's hard to remove that but yeah, it's hard to say.
[00:33:03]:
Like, you know, before I for sure I would have a list of stuff and now I'm like, I don't know man, I just think about work all the time and I know what's life after work. So I mean spending time with friends, going to events, etc, I don't know, it's hard to say what really like relaxes me because I don't know what's the state of relaxation. Of course, like going to a sauna for example, relaxes like you know what people commonly think of relaxation, right. And for sure those things relax me. But you know, if you really want to feel like peace in your mind, which I guess is one step after relaxation is doing stuff you really enjoy. Right. And I guess I would definitely spend more time relaxing. I mean doing like stuff which are more pleasurable for me and not just relaxing stuff.
[00:33:54]:
Yeah, yeah, for me beside more work because I observe sometimes working more and having results really relax me probably because lower my anxiety level of deliver things and validate my, I don't know, opinion about how good I am at what I'M I'm doing but beside that and gym and usual stuff, I like to play piano and I like to go to coffee shops, buy a coffee and go for a walk. That kind of activities really give me a peaceful mind every, every, every time. And sometimes before sleep I. I have I near me, I have a park and I'm going to work around 1 1/2 hour before sleep and it really helps me to. To sleep better after that work.
[00:34:56]:
What helped me help me sleep better was like going outside onto a park and do grounding. You know what grounding is? No, what is so grounding is the practice of just making your like remove your shoes, remove your socks and just sitting. You know, you have the earth to foot contact and some. I know how true it is. But basically like takes your negative energy out and goes to the soil. Because grounding, you know, grounding electricity, you're grounding your neck. What I don't know. But it helps for sure.
[00:35:32]:
Relaxing just sitting on this and doing like five, 10 minutes. Like I heard, like grounding helps for like recovering like I heard. I. I didn't read it but I listened to this audiobook called Superhuman and it's from a house called this Biohacker and he talked about this idea of grounding a bit like yeah, kind of works I think. I'm not sure if placio. But definitely it's very calming to having your foot kind of touch the ground some. There is something there which just relaxes your mind and that helped a bit.
[00:36:04]:
For sleep for sure. Yeah, I'm sure it's working because probably it's something different that comparing with what you are doing every day and it's a different feeling that you have. So probably that it's the reason why it's working.
[00:36:20]:
Okay, great. Now before I think do we have anything else else, I have a question to the audience.
Adrian Ispas [00:36:27]:
Oh no, let's ask the audience.
[00:36:30]:
So first of all, if you like to show, you know, like subscribe, you know all that good stuff. But I actually have a question on you guys and you can write this personally on LinkedIn or just on. On the comment section, whatever it might what's easier for you. We're curious how do you deal with stress and this is something we actually want to topic talk about. So if you're going to write your solutions and how you deal, we might actually talk about their experiences and maybe do an update on the next episode about how you deal with stress. Because we are curious because we are definitely, as you can see, definitely incompetent with that. So if you expect to learn something, you don't have anything from learn from us. We are horrible stress managers.
[00:37:15]:
But we would like to you how you deal with stress and hopefully better than us.
[00:37:20]:
Yeah. So we made this episode to learn how to manage our stress. So help us.
[00:37:25]:
This is therapy for us. Okay then I guess see you next time. Bye. Bye.
[00:37:31]:
Bye.