A Day in the Life of a Startup CEO: Chaos, Coffee, and Crazy Ideas

A day in the life of a startup founder: Mean CEO's Monday

Monday. Woke up at 7 am, grabbed my big mug of coffee and went back to bed. Checked the usual things (2 email accounts, the schedule, LinkedIn, Instagram, Google Analytics). 

Grabbed the second mug of coffee and a bagel and posted on Instagram. Not doing a lot there these days as the algorithm is punishing me for something, so I’m just waiting it out and testing. Wasn’t very inspired today, so posted nothing provocative on LinkedIn, even though the LinkedIn algorithm seems to like me these days. Got stuck on Twitter, had a great laugh catching up on the whole Twitter and FTX drama. Haven’t posted anything on Twitter in a long time, so their algorithm is simply ghosting me now. 

Got out of bed for a team meeting about Live Certificates. Ended up discussing the concert of Tove Lo that I attended yesterday. Boys were mesmerized. Had a good laugh and actually discussed all the issues and plans in under 20 minutes. 

Opened the notes to write down some ideas about impact becoming a vanity metric. 

Alright, what’s next? Got to sign a consent form for the Global Entrepreneurship Week online session. The whole process took a few minutes but then I ended up spending 10 more minutes reading through the document thinking if there’s anything in it for me to learn (GDPR, marketing, how universities think, etc). Noticed that I put the wrong last name in the document (kinda forgot that I am mrs Bonenkamp now), corrected the name. Reread the name to make sure I spelled it properly. Sent the document. 

Opened the notes to write down some ideas about Game Masters and community building. 

Checked a few sites on Similarweb to see if they are interesting for me to watch. 

Changed the text on the 404 page, made a quick post about it on LinkedIn and Instagram.

Had a quick chat with the designer and finalized the hoodie design for the remaining two winners of the pilot. Talked with one of the winners, made a post, ordered the hoodies. 

Looked at the watch deciding if I was hungry. The insides of the fridge didn’t impress, so decided to grab more coffee.

A 5 minute break to drink some coffee and have some activity on social media. Ended up talking to several people there discussing legal stuff and…Backstreet Boys. Work - life balance at its best. 

Alright, got a few applications to take a look at and decide if I want to apply. Spotify on. 

It’s a yes on the first application. NB. Loving web3 applications. When is the government going to learn from them? EU funding is all about at least a 20 page application that in the end they don't properly evaluate because they don't have enough people. What a waste of founders’ and tax payers’ time and a completely inefficient process. Btw, when I’m annoyed with something for a long time, usually it means, there’s a business opportunity. What I usually do is make “annoyed” posts on LinkedIn to test interest. If there’s enough people calling me angry, I might be on to something. 

Anyways, back on track. After more in-depth reading I decided to postpone the application and instead contact the team to figure out some ambiguous things. Let’s see how quickly they respond. Moved the application to later in the week in my schedule. Did the same for the second application, don't feel like doing it today.  

Received a video of the Starlink unpacking from Davide. The boy is a natural social media star, haha. Turning it into a reel now. I hate doing reels, as the results are so inconsistent. It’s social media for you: even a crystal ball won’t predict if something is going viral or not. 

Posting the reel on different platforms….Got hungry, decided to revisit the lunch idea seeing as it’s 2 pm already. 

Posted the reel to both accounts on Instagram (testing the reach), TikTok (because why not?) seeing as it’s just an extra minute of effort. LinkedIn, of course, failed the video upload (for a platform that doesn’t like links to external videos, they really suck with media uploads, as it’s not the first time posts were lost). Redid the post (and this time saved the text before publishing). Decided to never upload videos to LinkedIn ever again. It simply should not take this long. Alright, second attempt failed again. Damn it, LinkedIn, you are getting a post with a link to instagram instead of a native video. Noticed a typo and going to edit the post despite LinkedIn’s algorithm not liking it. I’m a rebel today. So, zero engagement for that post now? We will see. There’s always tomorrow. Made a Twitter post and tagged Elon (because he needs a distraction from rebuilding Twitter). 

It’s already 3 pm. Another look at Google Analytics to check what’s happening in the afternoon. 3 people signed up for the startup school in 4 hours. So everything as expected. Should tweak a few things in the coming weeks. 

The brain needs a break seeing as there’s an important meeting in two hours. Getting away from the computer for a bit.

Came back after 5 minutes later to write down a thought for the tonight’s meeting. 

Sent a message to the boys in Malta to put the drill away and first find a good location for the Starlink satellite. 

Spent some more time on Twitter, found a huge bug that leads to tweets disappearing. Gonna stay away from posting for a while until it’s more stable. 

Drank another mug of coffee. Received an answer regarding who to ask questions about the application, asked a few follow up questions. Reposted a LinkedIn post about Miro, but feeling that LinkedIn doesn’t like me today. Oh well, I will survive. 

Signed up for a beta testing of a startup-investor platform. These things require time but might be a great opportunity to learn. The fact that this happened today is funny as I just discussed doing something similar for our startup game this morning. So, it should definitely be a valuable experience. 

Found another competitor, checked their stats. Realized that we have another unique thing that nobody has. Wrote it down. Researched what they are doing in case we want to partner up. Connected to some of the alumni on LinkedIn. 

Got an email about being accepted into some Mentor Academy (why some? because I have no memory of what it is seeing as I applied so long ago) and signed up for the first workshop. 

20 minutes before the meeting: time to get away from the computer (attempt number 2).

And I’m back 8 minutes before the meeting to check our youtube stats. Making a note to change the location of the video in the new version of the website seeing as the number is not rising. Also, note to check Hotjar tomorrow to check how the updated website is being used. 

17.30 meeting went well, I think. At least I liked it more than the previous one.

It’s wine o’clock. 

PS. No answer to my questions regarding the application (I’m not happy, but will give them another 24 hours)

PPS. Calling it a day because the annoyingly long flu makes me tired quickly. 

PPPS. Decided to turn this into an article before I forget that I wrote it. I enjoyed the process. Let's see if it's useful to anyone or myself. 

PPPPS. Ended up checking Hotjar while already in bed. Not enough data on the new version of the website yet to make any meaningful conclusions. Saw that we were above the daily limit of recorded sessions and decided to exclude the ones fewer than 30 seconds not to miss out on the longer ones. 

The very last PS: Got stuck in Google Search Console for almost half an hour. It’s probably the first time I tried to figure out what it was about. I had an external SEO team deal with it before. And it seems that I missed on quite a few things that I should have paid attention to.