# I’m Paul Joyce, Founder and CEO of Geckoboard. AMA! **URL:** \ **Category:** AMAs\ **Tags:** past-guests, fundraising, pricing, transparency, pmf, founders-self\ **Created:** [September 24, 2020, 4:02pm UTC](https://gorelay.co/t/i-m-paul-joyce-founder-and-ceo-of-geckoboard-ama/486 "2020-09-24T16:02:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 13
**Author:** ![paul](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/gorelay.co/paul/32/91_2.png) [@paul](https://gorelay.co/u/paul)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2020, 2:25pm UTC](https://gorelay.co/t/i-m-paul-joyce-founder-and-ceo-of-geckoboard-ama/486/13 "2020-10-08T14:25:16Z")
> [@rajaraman](#): > > Hey Paul, > > Thanks for doing this! > > Having been a founder for a decade or so now, it would be great to hear how your internal compass (building a business you wanted to work in) has overcome the tension with external ones (the market and its kaleidoscopic demands)? As you look back, what are some of the core ways of thinking and principles that have helped the most? Hi @rajaraman - thanks for the question and to you and the team for hosting me today. 1. There definitely is a tension between internal ambitions and putting that into action in the real world! 2. My ambition to create a company I wanted to work in was shaped, in a large part, by my experiences of working in toxic environments in the past 3. Those experiences helped me understand what I _didn’t_ want 4. They also helped me develop a positive picture of what I wanted this business to be, the parts I cared most deeply about were, and remain: a) Interesting and important problem domain that I felt strongly about b) Working with people I respect in a collegiate way on a shared goal c) Work:life balance - my kids were aged 3 and 1 when I started 5. It’s easy to idealise the future but, as we all know, building something from nothing is often brutally hard 6. I realised very early on that Geckoboard could easily take 24 hours/day, 7 days/week if I allowed it… 7. And that it was going to be a long term project 8. I soon found that I had to define my priorities more explicitly to avoid burning out or being overwhelmed 9. The process of explicitly stating, and living, my priorities with discipline were the best antidotes to being caught up in whirlwind 10. I don’t think I could have survived 10 years doing what I’m doing if I hadn’t drawn those lines in the sand 11. It also helped that I discussed this during interviews from a very early stage, which helps candidates to select in or out of that 12. Once you reach a critical mass of people who want the same things, it starts to get a lot easier 13. This has since been codified in our company values and has shaped a culture that persists ten years later 14. Which is not to say that it doesn’t still require active monitoring, but now there are many eyes on the problem, not just mine --- _[View the full topic](https://gorelay.co/t/i-m-paul-joyce-founder-and-ceo-of-geckoboard-ama/486)._