collective insanity

There are so many things we touch as founders.

In a single day you might be closing a deal, firefighting a technical crisis, managing someone's emotions, reviewing a contract, and wondering if the whole thing makes sense. Anything can happen, coming from anywhere, for any reason (and it always, always happens at the wrong time).

And you are the sole responsible. People rely on you! Your team, your advisors, your clients, your partners... They trust you, they've bet something on you (maybe it's their time, their money, or their name). That trust is meaningful but it is also a weight.

Finding ways to cope is not optional. It's part of the job, and probably the part nobody prepares you for, ever, when you're starting a company.

Being open, honest and introspective about what you're feeling is a start. Not performing confidence you don't have. Not pretending the hard days aren't hard. Just being truthful with yourself, first.

Then find your people, a community of founders helps in a way that's hard to explain to anyone outside of it. What we are doing is collective insanity. Very few people can truly understand the feeling, the weight, the roller coaster. Those who walked the path get it immediately. Researchers who study it come close.

Everyone else means well and support is never enough.

Talk to them and be honest with them too. Beyond that, the advice is almost embarrassingly simple: don't do stupid things. Don't make irreversible decisions when you're at your lowest. Don't burn bridges out of frustration. Don't confuse a hard month with a failed company. Stay on the path. Stay resilient. Everything will be alright.

And like Ted Lasso would say...