What I Actually Do All Day as a Startup Founder

People sometimes ask me:
"Hey Tom, what are you actually doing all day?"

Do you have meetings?
Do you see people?
And why is it taking so long?
We thought you would have launched three months ago.

Fair questions.

And yes, it is taking more time than planned.

But not because I'm lazy.
Because startup life is a constant state of having a lot of hands in the air at the same time.

The invisible work no one sees

Take just this week.

I had a meeting with Agoria to understand how they can help pre-launch. That sounds simple, but it means diving into terms and conditions, GDPR, insurance, liabilities, and all the boring things that become very important the moment you go live.

Then I looked into VLAIO subsidies.
Is it feasible?
Where do you even start?
What are the conditions, timelines, and trade-offs?

At the same time, Flanders Investment and Trade invited me for a study trip to LEAP in Riyadh, from April 13 to 16. That triggered a whole new decision tree:

• Is the market relevant?
• Does it fit our ICP?
• What are the real opportunities?
• How does it compare to alternatives like AI Festival Dubai?

That meant research, comparisons, and gut checks.
I booked a hotel.
Reached out to the LEAP organization to get into the startup program.
And evaluated whether this is focus or distraction.

None of this ships features.
All of it matters.

Doing it right the first time

Then something interesting happened: a real opportunity to set up a proper trust center.

This is even before ISO 27001 or SOC 2 Type 2 certification.
But a trust center forces you to think through everything early:

• Security policies
• Privacy
• Data handling
• Internal processes

Having a background in consulting production companies, I strongly believe in "right first time". Fixing foundations later is always slower and more expensive.

So yes, that also took time.
Time to evaluate options.
Time to list open questions.
Time to decide what we commit to now and what can wait.

The unexpected distractions

Then there was the annoying part.

Spam bots started submitting fake forms on the website.
So suddenly you're not building the future anymore, you're blocking nonsense traffic.

Still necessary. Still part of the job.

I also implemented a Prompt Injection Shield this week. Not because it's a fancy feature, but because I genuinely believe this will become a major issue for every company using generative AI.

Security isn't a nice-to-have.
It's a decision you make early, or you regret it later.

Strategy and building, at the same time

In between all that, I worked on go-to-market:

• Reviewed ICPs
• Refined personas
• Thought about what the perfect first campaign could look like

I evaluated Stripe versus Merchant of Record models.
Looked into CI/CD best practices.

And yes, I also worked on the platform itself:

• Adding template-based category structures to simplify onboarding
• Debugging contact list import and export
• Improving FAQ management

This is startup life: strategy and execution, constantly switching context.

So yes, I'm doing a lot

Could this be structured better?
Probably.

Would that magically save a lot of time?
I'm not sure.

Some things simply take the time they take, especially when you're building something from scratch and you actually care about doing it well.

What I am sure about:
I love this.

I'm in full focus.
Fully dedicated.
Extremely motivated.

And despite the chaos, I genuinely enjoy the process.

That's startup life.