Adrian Spataru [00:00:00]:
Hi, I'm Adrian, and I'm a bootstrapped founder.
Adrian Ispas [00:00:09]:
Hi, I'm Adrian, and I’m a VC-backed founder.
Adrian Spataru [00:00:11]:
And we are Two Adrians Walk Into a Startup.
So today I want to talk about fear — specifically, my fear of heights. I have to confess: I’m really scared of heights. If I’m in a tall building and look down, I instantly feel anxiety and fear running through my body. I never fully overcame it, but I’ve learned to manage it better over time.
When I was younger, I used to freak out just standing near the edge of a building. Funny enough, I also did parkour back then — jumping between walls, doing tricks, sometimes even from one building to another. It sounds crazy because I was terrified of heights, yet I kept doing these jumps.
I remember jumping off balconies — maybe one or two stories high — onto the grass. Every time I jumped, the fear was there, but I did it anyway. It wasn’t reckless; it was always a calculated risk.
People who do parkour progress gradually. You start by jumping small distances — 10 centimeters, then 20, and so on — until you master each move. So when you eventually do a big jump, like from building to building, it’s not about physical ability anymore. You’ve already mastered the movement. It’s mental. The environment changes, but the skill doesn’t.
Now, you might be wondering, “What does this have to do with business?”
Well, I truly believe fear in life and fear in business are connected. You don’t have separate “personal” and “professional” fears — they influence each other. The fears you overcome in your personal life help you face the ones you encounter as a founder.
To finish the parkour story — I never completely lost my fear of heights, but I learned to stay calm despite it. I can look down from a tall building now without panicking. The emotions are still there, just weaker. And honestly, maybe that’s a good thing — fear keeps you cautious.
My thoughts stay clear, even when I feel afraid.
So, bringing this back to startups — what does fear mean for you in a business context?
Adrian Ispas [00:04:21]:
For me, it’s the fear of doing the accounting for my company. Every month, I get anxious about it.
Adrian Spataru [00:04:31]:
You mean accounting, not accountability, right?
Adrian Ispas [00:04:36]:
Yes, bookkeeping. I really fear that part.
Adrian Spataru [00:04:41]:
Is it because you’re worried about government compliance — like missing something important or not paying taxes correctly?
Adrian Ispas [00:04:48]:
Exactly. I’m afraid I might forget an invoice or miss a tax deadline, and that could make things “illegal” somehow. There’s also the fear of wasting time on something that doesn’t add much value to the business.
For me, accounting doesn’t feel meaningful — it’s just maintenance. The real fear is losing valuable time I could spend on things that actually grow the company.
Adrian Spataru [00:05:45]:
That makes sense. I realize that fear and failure are connected but not identical. So maybe the real question is — what does it mean to do the things that scare you in a startup context?
Adrian Ispas [00:06:11]:
First of all, fear exists both in real life and in building a business. For me, it shows up in different ways.
I remember a few years ago, when I tried to raise money for the first time. I was terrified of taking investors’ money and then losing it — basically, the fear of not being good enough or not knowing what to do with it.
Adrian Spataru [00:06:52]:
So, fear of failure?
Adrian Ispas [00:06:54]:
Yes, fear of failure.
Adrian Spataru [00:06:58]:
Or maybe fear of disappointment — they’re connected, but not quite the same.
Adrian Ispas [00:07:02]:
I think it was a mix of both. I was afraid of failing and disappointing the people who trusted me. These investors gave me their money to help my company grow — the pressure was real.
What I did back then was simple: I took the money anyway. Because fear isn’t something you solve rationally. Emotional fears aren’t logical — they come from experiences you’ve had throughout life. Sometimes there are layers of fears behind the main one.
So the best way for me to handle it was to act despite the fear and figure it out along the way.
Adrian Spataru [00:08:11]:
So the fear actually became motivation — like a signal in your brain saying, “I’m scared, so I need to face this.”
Adrian Ispas [00:08:27]:
Exactly. It’s part of my personality. Whenever something triggers fear in me, I see it as a signal that I need to look closer — to understand where it comes from and deal with it.
I have another example: for a long time, I was afraid of firing people.
Adrian Spataru [00:09:23]:
That’s like fear of rejection, but from the other side.
Adrian Ispas [00:09:24]:
Yes, exactly — fear of rejection. I never felt comfortable doing it. But as a founder, sometimes you have no choice — maybe because of cash flow, or because someone isn’t performing.
In the past, I made the mistake of postponing firings for too long. That fear made me delay hard decisions. Deep down, I thought that firing someone meant I had failed as a leader — that I hadn’t helped them grow enough to succeed in our environment.
Adrian Spataru [00:10:38]:
That’s a really interesting point.
If you don’t act because of fear, you create inaction, which often leads to regret. I once read a study — or maybe just a headline, let’s be honest — that said people regret the things they don’t do more than the things they do.
When you take action, even if it fails, you can accept it — you did your best at that moment. But inaction leaves you wondering, “What if?”
Like, What if I had fired that person earlier?
Adrian Ispas [00:11:37]:
Exactly. That’s something I learned the hard way — from my own mistakes.
Adrian Spataru [00:11:47]:
So now you’ve learned that fear is something you need to act on. When you don’t act, you end up regretting it later.
It’s almost like you develop a new fear — the fear of regret — which eventually becomes stronger than the original fear.
Adrian Ispas [00:12:08]:
Yes, exactly. The new fear overcomes the old one.
Adrian Spataru [00:12:14]:
Fear of rejection is such a powerful motivator.
And honestly, if you ever feel like you’re not taking enough action in your business, it’s worth asking yourself why.
Is it because you’re lazy? Probably not. Maybe it’s because of fear. Of course, sometimes you’re just mentally exhausted or facing decision fatigue — that’s different. But if you have the capacity and still don’t act, fear is usually behind it.
Adrian Ispas [00:13:02]:
I totally agree. In my experience, most of the times I’ve avoided taking action, it’s been because of fear. Sure, sometimes it’s just exhaustion or burnout, but most of the time, fear is the real reason I delay decisions.
Adrian Spataru [00:13:53]:
Yeah, I can definitely relate to that.
Adrian Ispas [00:13:57]:
Yes. And the interesting part is that at the beginning, you probably don’t feel enough of the other side of fear that can appear — for example, the fear of not taking action and the fear of consequences. But in time, by making these mistakes on your own, you learn, if you are open to understand. So basically, if you take your pain from inactions that you postponed and apply some layer of reflection — “Okay, what could I have done better here?”
Adrian Spataru [00:14:40]:
What could I have done better?
Adrian Ispas [00:14:41]:
What could I have done better here? What can I improve in the future? Whatever kind of reflection that is — it still means a minimum level of progress for you.
Adrian Spataru [00:14:55]:
Yeah, for sure. Now we talked about fear. We understand that fear — not of rejection, but of regret — is very strong. So to overcome that, risk and fear are related. Would you agree on that?
Adrian Ispas [00:15:18]:
Yeah.
Adrian Spataru [00:15:18]:
Taking risks, yeah. So one is like, oh, risk-taking in personal life, and one is taking risks in business. I would say they’re kind of the same, but something might be different between us two. I’m a bootstrap founder — taking risk is very personal for me because my business is kind of myself. Right? But you are a VC-backed startup founder, and that means, you know, you have capital. Did that change how you see risk and how you deal with fear?
Adrian Ispas [00:15:55]:
Yeah, definitely. Because taking a risk as a VC-backed founder is not so much about you on a personal level. It’s not just pure business and that’s it. You have investors, you raise capital with certain targets and certain levels of revenue that you have to reach in a period of time. So having that highly pressured environment forces you to make risky decisions. Why is it high pressure? The pressure always comes from the investors, and apart from that, because they invest money, they want to multiply their revenue. Statistically, probably one or two startups from their portfolio will return the full investment. So basically, those one or two startups have to be really, really big. So the pressure is applied to every startup in their portfolio.
Adrian Spataru [00:17:05]:
Because they have to compensate.
Adrian Ispas [00:17:06]:
Yeah, yeah, because they have to compensate. And yeah, the pressure comes a lot from the investors, but also from the way you build a VC-backed company. Because when you’re building a bootstrapped company, you have a very lean process of building the business — you don’t grow artificially, and you don’t grow at a fast scale. You grow more organically. But as a VC-backed founder, having this pressure of high returns for investors, you have to take bigger risks, you have to hire people faster, you have to introduce faster, I don’t know, some kind of “head of whatever” position, even if you are three people in your startup but already have a head of something. And this kind of artificial growth is probably one of the main causes of why startups die — because you don’t have enough time to build a strong foundation.
And from my personal mistakes and lessons, I think the best way to build a company, from my point of view right now, is to bootstrap from zero to, I don’t know, probably one million or something like that. Because this is the process when you build solid foundations. And from there, if you want to scale faster and bigger, sure — take money from investors, because by then you probably have the right processes. You really have good product-market fit. You probably know much better who your customers are.
Adrian Spataru [00:19:06]:
The hard work is done, per se — like the fundamentals. And the rest is that you can hire someone for growth, marketing, sales, etc., which just accelerates growth rather than building the actual thing from scratch.
Adrian Ispas [00:19:22]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because otherwise, you’ll be a small company with a few people, you haven’t figured out a lot of things, but you’re forced to figure out all of them. And usually, you hire someone to solve your problems — but nobody understands your business better than you.
Adrian Spataru [00:19:45]:
Well, you see, as a bootstrapper, you don’t just say, “Oh, you know, just bootstrap your business,” etc. There’s also a lot of pressure when running a bootstrapped company. I mean, I don’t know — maybe other founders are stress-free, but I’m stressed. For me, it was a stressful situation. Now it’s better, but in the beginning, it was very stressful.
I said earlier that personal decisions and business decisions, for me, were the same. Yeah, I’ll give you one example.
One of the big risks I took was investing in SEO — search engine optimization — which is a great way to build organic growth for your website. Now, what was the risk here? Well, first of all, I didn’t know it, and I learned by myself how to do it. But initially — what I didn’t mention — is that while I was writing articles myself, I also hired someone to write me a few blog articles. Because I wanted to see what an expert would do. I was like, “Hey, I have this product, these are the keywords I found,” and I wanted to learn from their work to understand what I really needed for my business. That came with a financial cost.
So initially, for Cleanvoice, I think I invested around €1,500. I don’t remember the exact details, but it was something like €1,000–1,500 for maybe 5,000 to 8,000 words. And that was a risk, because back then my bank account had, you know, €3,000 or €4,000 left. That’s a big portion of personal money invested in this.
And at that time, my revenue was around €100 per month. So, you know, that couldn’t cover any of those costs.
And yeah — the fear here was financial stress. When you don’t know if you’re going to have enough money for tomorrow, you feel it, right? Yeah. Now I’ve gotten used to it — which, funny enough, means that by feeling that fear constantly, it’s become normal. Kind of like, “Yeah, whatever, bro.”
Interesting side effect, right? It’s like, “It’s fine if I have no money, because I’m used to feeling like this — living paycheck to paycheck.”
Adrian Ispas [00:22:23]:
Yeah. If you stay long enough in situations that activate your fear, you’ll probably learn how to deal with it better.
Adrian Spataru [00:22:35]:
Yeah. So I think for you, there was still pressure to grow quickly because you were running out of money, right? Personal money in that case. So you still had pressure to grow, but then it's even, I think, a bit worse sometimes. Yeah, sure, I don't have external pressure — it's more internal — but the internal one is very big. Because if I fail, okay, a VC-backed company fails — no problem, right? It’s not the biggest issue ever, right?
You can start another company and then be considered a serial entrepreneur, right?
Adrian Ispas [00:23:09]:
Yeah.
Adrian Spataru [00:23:10]:
But when running bootstrap, that would have a huge financial setback, where it would take a lot of time to earn enough money to do it again. Right? So it is significant pressure. And yeah, I wouldn’t say it’s… maybe it’s easier than yours, I don’t know. But because it’s personal fear, it’s like your life you feel — because it kind of is. Is it really worse or harder? Hard to say.
Right, it’s about what you can deal better with. Can you deal with the pressure of others, or is it easier to deal with your personal suffering?
Adrian Ispas [00:23:55]:
For me, I think I’m better at dealing with my personal suffering rather than pressure from other people.
Adrian Spataru [00:24:05]:
And I think that’s a distinct thing. When you start a company, you need to feel what you can deal better with.
Adrian Ispas [00:24:12]:
Yeah, but this thing is really strongly connected with who you are as a person. For example, in my case, my type of personality — I’m kind of a little nice guy. So I constantly look and try to please the people around me. So basically, for me, it’s much easier to deal with my internal pressure instead of pressure from outside.
Adrian Spataru [00:24:46]:
I understand. Now we’ve talked about, I guess, some differences between bootstrap and VC. I guess the fear is kind of the same, just a bit different. We could say in the end it’s not such a big deal — but again, personal or dealing with other people.
Adrian Ispas [00:25:01]:
Conclusion: it’s not an easy way.
Adrian Spataru [00:25:04]:
You still have to do a lot of development.
Adrian Ispas [00:25:06]:
Yeah.
Adrian Spataru [00:25:06]:
And I think that’s it — there are a lot of fears you have to overcome. Mainly the fear of failure. I think the first one you deal with is the fear of rejection, because you’re going to have to talk with customers. Like, you’re not going to sell anything if you don’t talk with people. So that’s a good skill to have — just, you know, doing some basic sales, approaching people, contacting, etc. It’s uncomfortable, but you’ve got to do it.
There’s no way around it. And you know, just because it’s fear doesn’t mean it’s bad — because most of the fears you have, I think, are healthy fears. As in, they push you out of your comfort zone to become a better founder or even a better person, I would argue.
Adrian Ispas [00:25:54]:
Yeah, but fear doesn’t push you out of the comfort zone. Fear is there to keep you in the comfort zone — but with the right mindset, you can go outside your comfort zone.
Adrian Spataru [00:26:09]:
The fears are there as a signal to take action. Because if you don’t, then you’re going to have to deal with the fear of regret. And if you feel regret more than whatever you’re fearing now, maybe it’s worth pursuing it now. It depends, right? Like, I fear jumping from a building — oh, what if I jump from a hundred-story building? Man, I regret jumping from a hundred-story building.
Adrian Ispas [00:26:34]:
Yeah, it’s okay. I can live with that.
Adrian Spataru [00:26:37]:
Yeah, I can live… well, somehow not. We entered the suicide section very quickly.
Okay, good. Now I think we need to wrap it up nicely, so we’ve got the conclusion — how we can deal with this. But I want to maybe end with each of us sharing a personal story of something we were fearing, but did anyway. And maybe we did something and we failed completely. Because sometimes even if you’re scared of something and you do everything possible to avoid it, it can still happen.
So I’ll give you one non-business and one business example. I was, I think, 16 or 17, and I was in the airport and I saw a girl — but from the back, I wasn’t sure. I didn’t see her face.
I’m like, “You know what? There’s a girl, I’m going to approach her,” you know, basically hit on her.
Adrian Ispas [00:27:48]:
Hit or miss.
Adrian Spataru [00:27:50]:
Exactly — you know, throw my shot. It was scary because, like, man, it’s nerve-wracking. But it’s also a bit weird, a bit awkward situation. But like, you know, what’s the worst that’s going to happen, right? The worst case — I get rejected, etc.
I approach her and, you know, like, “Hey, blah, blah, blah,” and when she turned around, I saw her face. I thought she was, like, 16 — my age or something like that — but she was, I don’t know, late 20s, maybe early 30s. And I was like, “Ah… hey… hey girl.”
Adrian Spataru [00:27:52]:
Yeah, what's up? And it was, you know, very awkward because like, yeah, obviously — what the fuck are you doing, bro? But I still, you know, went on. And then later on, I said, “Sorry, actually I thought you were kind of my age.” And she was like, “Oh, thank you,” because, you know, that’s a big compliment — of course, telling someone they look younger than they are.
And at the end of the day, it was like, “Oh, that’s the worst thing that could ever happen.” She was looking at me, you know, giving me not good vibes. Definitely not happy about how I approached — like, okay, it could have been maybe worse. I don’t know. Definitely could have been way worse because I managed to get my way out of the situation.
But you know, you do things you fear, and it can still happen. And that’s okay. Yeah, and that’s okay. Sometimes the consequences are not that bad. In this case, we just had to laugh about it because I was honest about what I did, and she found it, you know, a bit funny, basically.
Now, okay — sorry, now about business.
So before Cleanvoice, I tried five projects, right? And Cleanvoice is the last one, which I guess is successful. Like, people could argue, yeah, that’s a successful startup.
For my third project — or second project, I think — I went to a random startup weekend event where, you know, you spend the weekend trying to build your idea and pitch, do like a pitch competition, and everybody feels amazing and blah blah blah. So one of those pitch competition startup events where you meet new people, try to make a business model, present it, and maybe win a prize.
On the first day, everybody could go on stage and pitch their ideas. I was scared. I wasn’t a public speaker, and I didn’t know, you know — I was scared that I would stutter, I wouldn’t present it nicely. And at the end, they were like, “Is there anyone who still wants to present their idea and convince people to join their team for the competition?”
And they were like, “Okay, no more.”
Adrian Spataru [00:30:48]:
“I want to present.” I just forced myself. That was the worst pitch of my life. I had a piece of paper I couldn’t read because the lights were blinding me — it was a stage, I was presenting. Like, you know how I was pitching? Something like this: “Hi, my idea is… we want to do this and, no, no, this is what I want to do…”
So imagine that — I was getting pity claps, you know, pitiful. Like it was so bad for them too, awkward even for the audience. Yeah, it was very awkward — the whole situation. So kind of the worst thing that could happen, right?
But after that, because I overcame that and even the worst thing happened, I was like, “Okay, if that’s the worst thing ever, the second time won’t be that bad.” And yeah, I definitely improved.
So sometimes you have to experience that fear — maybe the failure or whatever negative thing you’re running away from. Let’s say it happens, and you feel it. Negative emotions are not all bad. Negative emotions can sometimes be useful to grow as a person — it’s your signal to change.
And I don’t think it’s all that bad. Even if you fail, yeah, it sucks. But after the sucking — like, if you think more in the long run — sometimes, not always, it can make you a better person because you’ve experienced that negative emotion.
Adrian Ispas [00:32:34]:
Yeah, definitely, definitely. And one important part that you mentioned before — there are two types of decisions you can make. There’s a decision with a result that’s reversible, so you can fix it quickly. For example, I don’t know — you forgot to buy toilet paper. So basically, it’s a decision you can fix really, really quickly.
But another type of situation and decision that you can take — or not — is something where you’ll see the results a long time after the point. So this is probably one of the most difficult decisions to take or not because you don’t see the results fast enough. It’s more like a bet. So the fear is much more amplified.
Adrian Ispas [00:33:39]:
And here I have a story from Vatis. When we tried the first time to implement public upload in order to grow SEO for our site — basically, to attract more customers organically. The first attempt to implement this was, I don’t know, probably one and a half years ago. But we didn’t do it because, for the engineering team, it seemed too complicated to implement this type of public upload.
So we basically, I don’t know, killed the decision — we didn’t do it anymore. Yeah, yeah. But one year later, we saw a lot of people doing the same fucking thing as us — and they grew organically, aggressively.
So yeah, we came back to the decision, analyzed it again, and it seemed not to be as complicated as it looked the first time. So in two weeks, we also implemented public upload — but it was kind of late.
Adrian Spataru [00:34:55]:
Yeah, you still benefited, but I don’t think it benefited as much as it would have back then. Yeah, okay, but here — I guess what you’re saying with reversible vs. irreversible is more like, okay, let’s say you like YouTube Premium, but you also like Spotify. Yeah, I think it’s easy to understand: like, “Oh, I’m going to take one month of Spotify. Actually, I like YouTube more.” So you cancel Spotify and go back to YouTube — the cost wasn’t so big.
You can still switch. But if you have something like, “Oh, you have to subscribe for a whole year,” then that’s maybe still reversible, but kind of… yeah, it’s on the borderline. Right. And if you have something you have to commit to for life — you have to marry YouTube and cancel Spotify, can never use Spotify again —
Adrian Ispas [00:35:38]:
Yeah, it’s a big deal.
Adrian Spataru [00:35:40]:
No cheating allowed. Then the pressure is more. Right. Okay, good. So, by the way, if you have any comments about what we should talk about next — or want to tell us about your last fearful situation as a founder — we read every message you send us. So share your stories or tell us what you think about it, and see you next time.
Adrian [00:36:05]:
Bye bye bye.