It can be extremely difficult to acknowledge that you don't fit into a company's culture, especially when it's a company that you co-founded.
In August 2014, I co-founded Suncayr with four of my nanotechnology engineering classmates at the University of Waterloo. We had a vision of eliminating sunburns by knowing when your sunscreen wore off. At the height of it, we were covered on Fortune, Gizmodo, and Canadian Living, and we almost had a prototype ready.
We were a large co-founding team, and heard from the very beginning that there would be problems. We would fight, and co-founders would leave. I never thought that it would be me.
My decision to leave the company was not an easy one. I had put countless hours into the company, without receiving a single paycheque. My entire life was based around my role at Suncayr.
But I'm happy that I left.
For many outside of the company, this came as a complete shock. People didn't realize the extent of the problems beneath the glowing surface of the company.
Leading up to my departure, the cracks in the company structure were becoming chasms. The tech wasn't where it needed to be, which caused a huge divide between the business and tech teams within the company. Business wanted tech to hurry up and get a prototype ready so we could start selling it, while tech thought that the business team wasn't doing anything most of the time.
We also lacked a decision-making structure within the company. At first, we accepted that none of us had enough expertise to be the ultimate decision maker for anything. However, as we started to learn and meet with more and more advisors, this mindset didn't change. We would be held down by simple decisions for days because we all had opposing opinions and no one would budge.
Sure, we were all stubborn, but we also failed to recognize the roles that each co-founder had fallen into, and the decisions that fell in their respective laps.
The four months leading up to my departure from Suncayr was the most stressful period of my life. I barely slept, I constantly doubted myself, and my mental health suffered.
Suncayr continues to operate, and I still hope that they succeed. My departure from the company was not reflective of the product, but rather due to an inability to continue working with the team.
My experience was in no way unique. Many founders find themselves in the position that I faced. Culture is a difficult thing to maintain, especially when things start to go wrong.
Luckily, I've found a company that seems to have it figured out.
Chalk.com values the ability to grow and learn over the initial skill set that you bring into a company. I was hired for a marketing position, something that I'd never done before, because the team saw my ability to learn and adapt to new situations. After all, they are an education company – and one that values a great learning culture.
Having this mindset helps to prevent members of the team from blaming others when things aren't going as well as we'd like them to. Instead, the team at Chalk.com sits down together and figures out how to adapt our strategy to find more success. We value diversity in opinions, but ultimately decisions come down to the person who will act out the plan.
I've found a culture at Chalk.com that works. Leaving Suncayr was a difficult decision, but it helped me realize that there are work environments out there that make more sense for me.
Although I don't have any plans to leave my current position, I know that one day, the lessons I learned will be valuable when my time comes to lead a company again.
The Globe and Mail Small Business Summit brings the brightest entrepreneurs in Canadian business to Toronto for an inspiring day of keynote talks, workshops and networking. Full lineup at http://globesummits.ca/.