I thought it'd be interesting to document how my role as founder/CEO changes over the time, and that it'd be a great way to educate future inDinero team members how I contribute to the team. Back when we were just getting started, my job was simple: design features in photoshop, program them in ruby on rails. Show them to customers, gather feedback, rinse and repeat. But since raising money, I've been doing more "business-y" tasks to take inDinero to the next level. I'm sure my role will change over time, so I'll do this again when I feel that my role as CEO has drastically morphed once again.

10AM - Scan inbox for important messages, archive anything that isn't directly relevant to work. Schedule calls with potential hires, references for potential hires, and customers.

11AM - photographer from New York Times comes to visit us at the office. Takes a bunch of photos over the next hour. Noon - Eat Lunch, chat with customers over olark chat. Nice influx of requests today because of the mentions we got in American Express' Open Forum and Mashable.com over the weekend.

1PM - Call references for several potential engineering hires.

2PM - Talk to potential engineering recruit by phone, sell him on the idea of joining inDinero.

230PM - Chat with reporter from Reuters. Interview was scheduled only 18 hours ago! 315PM - Talk to lawyer about everything from employee compensation to other more confidential things :)

4PM - Another reference call for a potential engineering hire. Yes, we do a lot of reference checking!

430PM - Getting my new assistant up to speed on how to help me with my inbox, scheduling meetings to make my life easier, etc...

5PM - Review designer portfolios, work on improving candidate-flow for potential lead product designers.

630PM - break for dinner with the team.

715PM - talk to engineering recruit who we're about to extend a fulltime offer to. Answer his questions on why inDinero is the best startup in Silicon Valley, convince him to join us.

9PM - focus on only product, design new functionality based on the customer feedback I got earlier in the morning from people I chatted with through the inDinero website.

1AM - shower, read a book (this week, it's "Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller")

2AM - off to sleep, rinse and repeat process the next morning.

I would like to arrange a meeting with you in person to discuss them with you and if you are interested, become a partner. Meaning, you can build a functional prototype for my websites. And from there, present them to venture capital companies.

When you or your company receive press, something too good to be true happens: you feel a sudden inflow of success and accomplishment, people compliment you for the writeup you received, and everything feels great. Problem is, you start to get lazy. You settle into this comfortable feeling of accomplishment, when in reality, not a single thing has changed before and after the press you received.

A few days ago, TechCrunch broke the news that inDinero raised $1M from angel investors. I thought it'd be cool to share, but it never struck me as a big deal. Raising money is possibly the most boring part of working on a startup, so if anything, I wanted to be done with it. What happened next was interesting: dozens of my friends and acquaintances sent me congratulatory emails and facebook wall posts, and the moment felt like I was being congratulated for giving birth or doing something actually monumental. Raising money, in my opinion, is the least monumental thing that can happen to ones company. But it sure is press-worthy! While friends give me pats on the back, Paul Graham from Y Combinator tells me "Now you just have to not screw it up!" It's like what a good asian parent would say; just because you got As in school doesn't mean you'll actually succeed in life. I sense that a lot of first-time entrepreneurs get too much pre-mature press (because it's so easy to get), only to have it prevent them from doing what's best for their newfound businesses.

To prevent having this problem myself, I've conditioned myself to get more antsy after getting any congratulatory letter. I translate "congratulations" into "don't f*ck it up", and it puts me in this ideal place in mind where I feel good about having accomplished a very limited milestone, but understand that it doesn't actually mean anything as far the big picture is concerned. I highly recommend other first-time entrepreneurs do the same. Press is great, but in reality, nothing has changed since your writeup. Now back to building product.