Partying is a very serious matter

I have never understood the contempt some people have for entrepreneurs who celebrate a funding round. All it takes is a photo with a few glasses for a serious man to explain that they have not won anything yet. They have only earned the right to keep going. Thank you, they were in the room when they signed.

And yet they have also faced rejection, defended their project, negotiated, doubted and finally persuaded people. Something has happened. Why should they have to wait until they know how the whole story ends to be happy about reaching a milestone along the way?

This objection goes far beyond fundraising. It expresses a way of living that I find sad: joy is always premature. There is always a problem serious enough to forbid any celebration. Since there is never a shortage of problems, the ban can last a lifetime.

There will always be something left to do

There is no point in a company’s life when everything is sorted out. Finding customers creates delivery problems. Managing to deliver allows you to grow, and then you have to learn to work with more people. The difficulties change as you make progress. If you wait for them to disappear before celebrating, you have chosen a particularly unsuitable line of work.

I can understand being wary of people who mistake an announcement for an accomplishment. Getting money does not prove you will know what to do with it. But opening a bottle does not necessarily mean you are unaware of that. You can be happy in the evening and perfectly clear-eyed the next morning. I know people who are quite capable of fooling themselves while remaining completely sober.

What bothers me most is how the moment when we will finally be allowed to enjoy ourselves keeps moving. After this contract. After this hire. After this year. We end up treating the present as a waiting room, thinking that real life will begin when the work is finished.

Yet work already fills our days. The people we are building something with are already part of our lives. The years we give them will not be handed back to us on the way out. I find it hard to call an ambition reasonable when it requires us to see all that time as mere preparation.

Loving the life work gives us

I like projects in which we share more than objectives. I like conversations that spill over, meals that go on, people who become interesting the moment they stop trying to be useful. A future in which everything is efficient and nobody wants to have dinner is not my idea of a dream.

You can defend these moments by explaining that they build trust or that a good idea might emerge between the cheese and dessert. That happens. But I do not want to have to produce an economic justification every time I have a good evening. By trying so hard to prove that generosity pays, we end up allowing ourselves only the kind of generosity that turns a profit.

It matters to me who I will be spending my days with. Someone can be excellent at their job and make me want to cut every conversation short. Someone else can make me enjoy even the difficulties we are trying to solve together. That matters when choosing an adventure. It ought to matter before we have committed ourselves for years.

A party gives that pleasure in being together a visible place. It also lets us stop for long enough to look at what has been done. While working, our attention naturally turns to what is missing. Someone who fixes one problem immediately discovers another. Over time, even a team making progress can feel as though it never accomplishes anything.

Taking an evening to celebrate gives the efforts already made their due. You thank someone in a way other than immediately handing them the next task. Work can resume tomorrow without cancelling out what was accomplished today.

The château we were right not to buy

A business partner and I once wanted to buy a château where we could host entrepreneurs. We liked the idea enough to go and see what it looked like in the real world. We tested people’s interest, visited properties, met owners and spent far too much time on the road.

We even ended up stuck in a forest because we kept obeying the GPS instead of looking ahead. We were looking for a place to help entrepreneurs find their way. Clearly, we needed a little practice ourselves.

The project did not go ahead. The renovations, the costs and the roofs had taught us about the distance between liking a château and running one. Reality had answered our enthusiasm. We were right to listen.

Yet when I think back on that story, I do not see only a purchase that never happened. I remember extraordinary moments. We had learned things and built relationships that proved useful elsewhere. We had also enjoyed searching together. That pleasure had not waited for a signature at the notary’s office to exist.

I could dress all this up as a lesson about failure, explain that every detour was necessary and that, secretly, we had won. That would be too convenient. Some of that time could probably have been better spent. We had not reached the goal we had set ourselves. We need to be able to say so without erasing everything else.

An experience can fail in its purpose and still be precious in a life. Conversely, some financially successful deals have taught me very little. The visible result and the value of living through something do not always coincide. Confusing them leads us to embellish our successes and diminish the memory of everything that did not work out.

Keeping both pleasure and judgment

This distinction requires honesty. When we grow attached to the people and moments a project gives us, we may want to keep the project going to hold on to them. We then start defending a bad decision with very good memories.

Affection does not exempt you from doing the sums. Having laughed a lot during the visits does not make a roof any cheaper. A business has to produce something others want, on terms that allow it to keep going. If it cannot, the quality of the dinners does not solve the problem.

But judgment has to work both ways. A bad deal does not retrospectively turn every encounter into a mistake. You can stop an activity, acknowledge what it cost and still be glad you met certain people. I wish we were better at closing a project without disowning the years we spent living it.

And I wish we could party without asking everyone to want the same life. Some people want to go home. They have children, friends, or simply want to be left the hell alone. Asking them to prove their commitment by staying for dinner would be a strange way of defending joy. A party you have to attend to be thought well of looks a lot like a meeting.

What I am looking for comes down to that freedom. Being able to work intensely, tell each other frankly when things are going badly, and still want to get together when nobody requires it. There is nothing to stage. We are allowed to be proud of a milestone without presenting it as a triumph. We are allowed to have a lovely evening while what comes next remains uncertain.

I do not know in advance which adventures will succeed. I can choose some of the people I attempt them with, how I treat them and the space I leave for pleasure in work. Those are already important decisions. When I think back on the château we did not buy, I am glad I passed on the roof. I am just as glad I made the trip.