Today I am stepping away from being a full-time employee of the company I started, Lattice. Unlike most other founders’ stories or articles you may have read, this was not due to me being pushed out, or the company going bankrupt, nor really about me being burnt out. In fact, Lattice is doing great, far better than I could have ever dreamed when Jack, my cofounder, and I started the company a little over 6.5 years ago - we have over 4,000 customers, 700,000 users, 600+ of our own employees, and our last valuation came in around $3B dollars. For most startup founders, this would be when things start to get especially interesting, yet I decided it’s time for me to move on. I’m writing this partially for those interested in the why and partially for my own closure.
Starting a company
People start companies for different reasons. Some people get obsessed with an idea, others do it for the potential wealth they could generate, while others may be swept into it by a friend or colleague who may be motivated by one of those first two. I started Lattice because I felt I had something I needed prove to myself.
My father is a serial entrepreneur who has by now started half a dozen businesses. Some of them were very successful; others, spectacular failures. He’s someone who loves the challenge of building and has an amazing gift for combining his knowledge across various fields (chemistry, physics, manufacturing, etc) into business ideas. That all said, growing up I didn’t see much of my father. He worked all day, came home to join us for dinner, then holed himself up in his office to continue working for the rest of the evening.
I discovered pretty early on that the best way to get my father’s attention would be to ask him about his work. At that point, he would light up and easily go on for an hour or two about exactly what he was working on, strategies employed, and so forth. I grew up listening to my father’s corporate escapades, about taking on far bigger businesses and winning. Stories about creating then applying trade secrets to transform the markets he operated in.
Growing up surrounded by these stories, always looking up to my father but also never feeling like I had his approval or attention, gave me a chip on my shoulder. If he could do it all, could I? And if I was successful, maybe I could earn his respect.
Growing a business
Lattice started much the way typical startups in Silicon Valley do, with a noticeable problem and a desire to do it better/easier/faster. Jack and I worked together at a rapidly scaling startup called Teespring that, as more employees joined, seemed to lose sight of the culture and importance of investing in employees. We asked ourselves, ‘Could we fix Teespring’s issues with technology?’ and that became the basis for all of Lattice.
The first year of Lattice was a lot of work, then a lot of existential dread, and finally, a lot of fun. For the first 7 months, it was just Jack and I. Jack would handle all of the business bits while I built the entirety of the product. We didn’t kill ourselves by any means, but it still meant programming for 9+ hours a day, 6 days a week. 4 months in we had done a lot of work, but still had no real validation (customers) and that’s where the existential dread came from.
I very vividly remember sitting with Jack outside on the grass asking each other if we were just wasting our time/lives on this project. Both of us had other opportunities that would pay well and be a whole lot less work. The project we poured our time, effort, and passion into for the last 4 months had not made a drop of difference to anyone. Plus, there wasn’t really any end in sight. But we ultimately decided that we were going to give it another couple of months and see what happens. I’m glad we did. As soon as we started getting our early customers, everything changed.
There is a night and day difference between having customers and not as a startup. Suddenly, we had people who cared about Lattice (other than just Jack and I). And they were paying us! Instead of Jack and I just theorizing what would be a good idea to build or add to Lattice, we had a group of users we could just ask. Or, even better, they would tell us exactly what sucked about our product and we could fix it. It felt great, made us feel like we had a purpose again, and not just floating in space. Before we knew it there was more work than Jack and I could handle ourselves and we had to hire others. And that’s when Lattice really became a lot of fun.
I love Latticians (demonym of people who work at Lattice). The people who resonate with our company mission, “Make work meaningful”, and want to solve human issues all day are the exact type of people I love being around. Everyone who joined us was genuinely humble, who just wanted to do right by one another and our customers, and were motivated to do good work. Some of our earliest hires also ended up being some of my best friends. The work we did back then didn’t suddenly get easier, in fact in many ways it got harder once we had employees, but at least there were now others to problem-solve or commiserate over the work with. We would have a long day at the office, but would then be able to go across the street to a bar and unwind. Overcoming shared struggles felt amazing and made me feel like I had found my community.
We continued to steadily grow and, by the end of 2019, had gone through 3 offices and had grown to ~125 people. Things were going great, until something that would change my relationship with Lattice.
The pandemic
In March of 2020, we were one of the first businesses to go fully remote. And not by our choice. One day we showed up to the office to find it locked with a note saying that a member of the building staff team had gotten COVID and the office was shut down until further notice. That office never opened up again for us.
Some people love working from home. It gives them the flexibility they want, it allows them to see their families more, and it saves them a ton of commuting time. But as a single guy that truly didn’t have much going on outside of work, it felt like I was being ripped away from the community that I loved so much. Zoom was just not the same as being in the office together. And if I didn’t work directly with someone, there was suddenly no reason for me to ever see or interact with them. Without the people-side of things all I was really left with was the work itself.
The work
In YC, one of the mantras they drill into founders is that the two tasks one should prioritize over everything else are:
- Talking to customers
- Shipping solutions to their problems
If you’re not doing one of those two things you should either not do it or keep it to a minimum. Thankfully, those are the two things I love doing more than anything else. I find talking to users of a thing I built awesome and super energizing. And I also love building things, especially if they make someone’s life better in some way. This gets even more exciting when they’re then willing to pay you for that thing you built because it does what they need it to do.
But as Lattice became bigger and more successful, I found it harder to just do those two things. Once you’re a successful, scaling organization, you need to start focusing on roadmapping, prioritizing, getting cross-functional alignment, driving technical initiatives, dealing with interpersonal issues, hiring (oh so much hiring), and more. None of these are unimportant tasks. Doing these things allow the people doing the real work, the ICs, to mostly focus on talking to customers and shipping solutions. As things changed, I realized these new responsibilities were not the things that drove personal satisfaction for myself.
Now you may be starting to say, “Well Eric, aren’t you a cofounder? Can’t you work on whatever you want? Can’t you just work on talking to customers and shipping solutions if that’s what you want to do?“. Truth is, you’re most likely correct. If I was better at organization crafting maybe I could have created a situation like that. I know I tried many times to do just that. But in each situation I eventually (and probably rightfully) kept getting pulled back out to work on higher-level issues. As cofounder and CTO there are just a class of problems I cannot turn a blind eye to.
And so I kept finding myself in these cycles where I was no longer satisfied or happy with the work I was doing.
Practicing what we preach
At Lattice, we often talk about “Ikigai”. “Ikigai” is a Japanese word miss-applied to a Spanish astrology concept. But etymology aside, what we’re referring to is the concept of having your work be in alignment with your purpose and be a source of happiness. We’ve strived to create an environment in Lattice where if an employee no longer feels alignment with their role that they’re empowered to take action. Maybe that’s as easy as taking a break, but often it requires a lot more than that. Sometimes it’s changing projects or teams. Other times it’s trying out a lateral move to a different position within the same organization. But we also tell our employees, sometimes it’s Lattice itself which is the source of lack of satisfaction and that is okay. It’s okay to no longer be satisfied with the work you do at the company and to want to seek your next opportunity elsewhere. That is the natural cycle of employment and something we’re here to support our employees through that transition.
But what I didn’t realize when I was speaking about this over the past few years was that it would one day apply to myself as well.
While I’m incredibly proud of what Lattice has become and the impact it has on the world, it’s become time for me to move on to the next part of my journey.
What’s next
I’m not leaving Lattice completely. I’ll still be on Lattice’s board and will continue to advise the company, especially when it comes to the larger strategic initiatives. But, with much reflection, I’ve decided to start a new company. I’m excited to try this all over again and revisit the excitement of those early days. However, I’m going to be building something very different from Lattice. Now that I better understand myself and my motivations, I’ve decided to create a community-based product, as well as combine a few other of my passions into one cohesive business.
If you’re interested in online communities, video platforms, the creator economy, or VTubers, and want to join me on this next adventure please reach out! I can be reached via Twitter DMs or my email is pretty easy to find online. 😁
Thanks for taking the time to read this! While it might have been more of a ramble than I was planning, it did allow me to share a little bit more. Not only my decision, but the thought process that went into this choice. If you ever find yourself in a similar position, please reach out to me! I’d be happy to talk it through with you.
P.S.
Thank you Jack and Alia for proof reading and making this a lot
better than anything I could have written by myself!