Do More Faster India, 2nd Edition

Chapter 26If You Can Quit, You Should

Laura Fitton

Laura was the founder and CEO of Oneforty, a Twitter apps marketplace, and the coauthor of Twitter For Dummies. Oneforty raised $2.35 million from Flybridge Capital Partners, after completing Techstars in 2009. It was acquired by HubSpot in 2011.

I’ll admit it; I’m addicted to my company.

I started Oneforty as a 38-year-old single mom with no technology management background. I had never built software before in my life. I felt so thoroughly unqualified to pursue the opportunity that I started making phone calls to people who I thought could build the company for me. I simply wanted to see it come to life and I thought the best way was to recruit someone else to carry out the vision so that I could be an advisor to the company.

I had two very young, cute, reasonable excuses (my kids) why it was a bad idea for me to do a startup. I had no cofounder and I knew better than to do it alone. I tried to give the idea away and to get another group to do it. And when that failed, I quit. Well, at least I tried to quit.

I spent another four months trying creative new ways to quit the idea. I kept trying to find someone else to do it because I didn’t want to do it myself. But no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t quit.

I like to tell other founders that you have to be so stuck on your idea that you literally can’t quit. There are going to be a thousand times in the process that you’re going to want to quit, so if you’re going to ...