There is a mental health aspect to this for sure, but there is also a practical one. From a mental health perspective people who are bipolar are very over represented in the founder pool because mania is rewarded in many startup situations. Even if one is not clinically bipolar the experience of running a startup is like imposing this condition on yourself in many ways. There is also a practical aspect to this problem, if you don't want founders to kill themselves give them a job board. I'm 43 years old with no degree, I've taken two startups including the one I'm running now from zero to $50K in MRR on shoestring budgets. If I fail this time my fall back plan is to work at a tire store or be a police officer. Yeah I've been through the Google hiring process and others but in the end I always come up just short, because I'm a little weird and I'm not a specialist... I'm a generalist. Not enough businesses actively recruit failed founders, this promotes the succeed at all costs mentality which is obviously toxic.
This really rings true with me as someone who's interviewed a few failed founders for PM roles. This was always at early-stage startups, so it wasn't an issue of skills (generalists tend to be great fits for early-stage PM work) but rather a question of whether this was just a temporary stop to shore up finances and get a break from the stress of being a founder until it was time to start the next company.
I believe we only hired one that I interviewed, and sure enough he lasted six months before leaving. Great guy, and we parted ways amicably, but he just couldn't go back.
And now that I'm on the other side of it as an early-stage founder, I honestly feel like my instincts against hiring them were right. If my company failed, I'd probably get a PM job, but I'm not sure if I'd be able to stick with it. On the one hand, it would honestly be really nice to have the stress of ultimate decision making on someone else's shoulders, but at the end of the day, even with the stress, I like being the one to call the shots.
Something more advisory would probably be more interesting, but obviously advisory jobs for startups aren't easy to come by.
The upside for me, at least, is that I didn't decide to start something until I had a healthy financial cushion. I've put some money in, but I'm absolute never going to be one of those back against the wall, deep in credit card debt kind of founders. That would create more stress than I could handle, and I think the glorification of that lifestyle definitely leaves some failed founders in much worse positions than they should end up in.
Founders, in general, have to work really hard on themselves to avoid starting gazillions of projects, features, side hustles, and so on. And that's whilst being fully busy with their one business they're founding.
So I totally agree that in a regular job, it's just a matter of time until they bounce, at least mentally.
The problem today is the glamourisation of "starting your own thing". I did it and still do it because in a way, that's all I can do without losing my mind entirely, but it's far from being easy or fun or even at times enjoyable. It's just that a job would be worse for me. And I hate seeing people built for companies start their own and be completely miserable because they're barely using their skillset since they now have to do everything, everyday. (Talking about bootstrapped tech here.)
> I always come up just short, because I'm a little weird and I'm not a specialist... I'm a generalist. Not enough businesses actively recruit failed founders
No offense meant to you but this comes off as a little lazy and entitled. As a founder you should be familiar with encountering situations where you’re perhaps a bit out of your depth and not perfectly prepared, but you eventually figure out a way to do what needs to be done. No reason you can’t apply that mentality to getting a regular job if you wanted to.
I’m a previously failed founder myself, now working at a FAANG company. Nobody recruited me specifically as a former founder, and it wouldn’t have made sense to. There are certainly aspects of being a good problem solver that many founders possess that are universally useful, but notice the failed part of my background. I hadn’t proven anything to anyone through that experience. Instead I prepped for and went through the interview process like everyone else, got my fair share of rejections along the way (which is another thing being a founder prepares you for!), but eventually found something that works for me.
I think it's strange to call someone "entitled" whose back-up plan if their start up fails is to work in a tire store. Entitled people's plans don't include tire stores.
> Entitled people's plans don't include tire stores.
Why do you think so? I've met some extremely entitled people with very few options in life, often because their entitlement gets in the way. In grad school I was friends with a homeless guy who insisted that he wouldn't take a job in which a younger person was his boss (he was in his fifties) as he felt he was a lot smarter/wiser than those people. So that ruled out a lot of job options for him. His backup plan was doing some work in construction and helping out a guy with a welding shop because those bosses were older and one of the few people he respected well enough to consider working for them.
Being entitled is a state of mind, in which you think you are better or more deserving than what life is giving you. It is a question of the heart, not the career.
I think you're reading something else from this than was intended.
It's not like he wants a role that would align with his experience, it's more like he's concerned that as a failed founder, his CV would land in the bin.
The tire shop remark points to this interpretation.
I think you're selling yourself short. If you're a generalist, there are plenty of startups who need exactly that. FAANG might not value all of the experience you have, but there are a hell of a lot of companies that do.
I would also say that the best businesses hire failed founders. They're among the most valuable early employees imaginable.
I run a company called Localize (https://localizejs.com). I’d love to speak to anyone with a background like yours for a PM or technical role with us. There’s no experience better than starting and failing at startups/side projects to prepare yourself for a Product Management role.
It does, though. Well, hypomania at least; I've never experienced mania.
Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't have a single day of hypomania for the rest of my life if I could help it, but it _does_ make you more productive for a short amount of time. It isn't worth it, however.
It comes at a cost, not only mental but also physical (lack of sleep, disturbance in appetite), but in that short period where your brain is on fire, you can do a lot more work than usual.
During one of my worse episodes, I was doing 16 hours of high-intensity work per day for about a month. Then I crashed, of course. In my experience, bad hypomanic episodes are usually followed by even worse depressive episodes. Just the sheer exhausting from it is bad enough to make you want to avoid it as much as possible. Lithium is a life-saver.
And pretty often that person will break the wall into something that harms. Up to and including suicide or only destruction of business itself. Yes, at high speed, but where you going actually matters.
Talking about mania as pure increase in productivity ia itself absurdly reductive.
> You’re in the arena. You’re building. You will, at one point in the near future, be miraculously happy and successful
It was a little weird reading this because I became suicidal after I became successful and had a big bank account, beautiful wife and status home.
I'm still trying to understand it, but basically I was so focused on success that I forgot to have a life outside of work. Then when the work was done, I didn't have a life. When I looked around I saw that my kids were grown and I was never going to get that time back. Be careful what you wish for is all I can say.
I've not had any kind of big success or built a business but I think I can relate to this being perhaps "successful enough" relative to people I know / my own expectations.
I think you can pour so much of your energy and focus into this vision of the goal you need to complete to feel fulfilment/happiness that it blocks out the depression, you're too busy to feel down and it will fuck up your plans and your goal to give into it, that's for other, less successful people (not my view, just what one tells oneself).
Then you get to that goal or aim and realise it doesn't make you feel the way you told yourself it would at all, maybe you feel a moment of satisfaction but it's probably very brief. Then you realise the beast of financial insecurity and social failure has stopped chasing you and that drive to override your mental state disipates, then you're alone with the underlying problem, the lack of any meaning to it all.
Sorry if that's not the way you experienced it but I thought I'd bounce the idea around. I hope you find a way to work to some peace with it.
People with money seem so happy. I had a lot of cognitive dissonance when money didn't make me happy. The lifestyle I obtained felt like a gilded cage with no way out. The wife certainly wasn't buying my unhappiness and wouldn't consider that we should go back to what we were. If you didn't grow up with money, then I strongly recommend people get themselves a wealth counselor. I'm not even sure they exist, but didn't find anyone who could discuss with me my feelings about money and what it meant for my identity.
I don't know about a wealth counselor, but get a therapist. So many people, especially founders, would benefit from talking to a professional.
Honestly, I'm surprised that there aren't a few therapists who work exclusively with founders - I'd honestly love to see a VC firm with a therapist on staff for its founders.
If investors offered me counseling services, I don't see how I'd feel comfortable taking them. Not because I have anything against therapy (I used to regularly see a CBTist, and still employ the techniques personally all the time), but because I would have an incredibly hard time believing in both the VCs' wherewithal to hire such a person on more than their perceived celebrity within their professional/social circle and also I'd struggle in fundamentally trusting that mine and the therapist's incentives were properly aligned.
It seems like it couldn't possibly produce a dynamic that's much different than say corporate HR. Wherein the helping hand extended to the employee is always beneath that of the one that's protecting the company.
But, maybe that's just me exposing my rank cynicism, which by some measures is a personality flaw in its own right.
I recently spoke with someone from Alpha Bridge Ventures (https://www.alphabridge.vc) after writing a book about entrepreneur mental health. They provide mental health services to their founders, and my understanding is that they have a firewall between the investors and a separate entity that provides mental health services. A menu of mental health services is available to founders but the investors never know which founders are using them. Although they emphasize the intrinsic humanitarian value in helping their founders, they also rationalize their approach by noting that providing mental health services is good business; founder burnout is a leading risk factor for startup failure. I was impressed by their approach, which seems to mitigate the incentive problem.
Yeah, that's fair. I don't think it's quite like HR because it's a situation where your interests and your VCs' are better aligned, but that's not always the case.
Maybe better if they could just refer some independent therapists who have experience with founders.
That all makes a lot of sense. I wonder if those issues could be alleviated by contracting a sufficiently large outside firm to manage therapy services, thus at least creating some separation and objectivity for individual therapists.
My wife has been using an approach called "Design Therapy" (www.designtherapy.org) that uses design thinking methods for self/couples development. This allows mental health challenges to be approached outside of a "disease treatment" frame. I appreciate the approach.
It’s becoming increasingly popular, at least in NYC, for VCs to promote their mental healthcare perks. Some have coaches, some even have psychologists as GPs. We are making progress.
My cursory view of your personality is that you would feel the same misery if you had spent all your time with your kids and none of your time chasing your dream to build a company. Many people find peace with meditation, therapy, exposure to nature, exercise, limiting caffeine / alcohol, natural medicines etc.
I would have had the same hole inside, but I have found since that the love of my children goes a long way towards helping that. I am saying that I denied myself this for 9 years because I was busy, and I denied them a father who was present and paying attention. With a lot of work, together we have figured it out. The funny thing is they grew up with a lot of money and now there is none, but neither one of them has said a single word about the money being gone. They are happy I am back.
I wager you don’t have kids yourself. Anyway, missing your kids growing up is a forever lost opportunity. Starting a company is not. Very much not comparable
True but some people just don't chase sharing moments with kids that much. Whilst most people seem to want kids, not all of them want to spend all their time with them at the expense of their own personal dreams.
We're perhaps still under the influence of some older generations' way of living...
Man this comment is scary af for me. I mean I don't know you from adam but getting to the success at the end of the rainbow is what makes me jump out of bed each morning and not want to go to bed each night.
It's my dream that consumes me and keeps me happy more than anything else. But I too sometimes feel that "what happens after it's done" and it is not everything I imagine it to be. What if the bag of dreams we're all chasing is just empty like this Alan watts video(1).
Call it denial but I just try not to think about it a lot as I don't know what the future holds and it's pointless to speculate right now as every person is different. But reading your comment did scare me a little tbh!
If success is the only thing that drives you it's inevitable that you'll be depressed when you become successful because you've just lost the one thing that keeps you going.
Can you expand on your experience? any particular lessons you learned? Seems like you had all the conventional marks of success, I find it hard to believe that that was all for naught.
It wasn't all for naught, but success is not going to completely fill the hole inside. Lesson? It's simple, don't work all the time and neglect your family. I cringe everytime I hear Musk talking about working 100 hours a week. He has kids by previous marriages afaik, but it sounds to me like he's not much more than a sperm donor. He's a terrible role model for fathers. I worked probably 70 to 80 hours a week for 9 years. My son has a lot of complaints about me not being there and he's right. The only thing I can say to him is that I'm here now.
Maybe it was whose definition of “success” the person was pursuing…conventional definitions are conventional because people accept them without deep reflection on whether they are right for them. They are easier to adopt than to question.
Or a problem with winning the rat race is you have to be a rat.
If you've seen Breaking Bad (if not, I'm not spoiling much) there is a scene where he tells his wife "I did it all for the family" and she disgustingly turns her head away and says something like "You did it for your own ego. You didn't care about us." It's kind of like that.
I was raised in Spain. We have the opposite problem. The catholic culture is "nothing is your responsibility", even things that clearly are.
It is Mt 6,24-34
“No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear."
It just doesn't make sense for me to suicide because my business fails. There will always be an excuse and failure is just not that important.
In the protestant culture, it is the opposite, "everything is your responsibility", even things that clearly are not. "success" and "failure" are sacred words, like "winners" or "losers". And life is about competition and individualism, even in teams.
I have helped refugees and drug addicts. I would never have the temptation to call them(or think about them as) "losers", but I have seen people in the US call them this word.
It is a good idea that you expose yourself to different cultures so you could see through and take what is good for each one. Both approaches have advantages and disadvantages.
I wonder if "hustle mentality" is something of an evolution the Puritan work ethic for a secular age? There's strains of Evangelical protestantism which place a great emphasis on the value of hard work to the exclusion of other parts of life, and Evangelicalism was extremely influential on Anglophone society for a large part of its history.
"People that are successful work hard" "I'm not successful yet" -> "Work harder" is a positive feedback loop train to burnout.
Maybe the real secret is "People that are successful work hard and have balance in their lives" but the problem is nobody knows what balance is. It's different for every person.
Hustle mentality is a choice. You can choose to prioritize other things. Most people will never be at the top of the world; it’s ok to have a well-paid but mundane job and use the money and free time to enjoy life. If we’re being honest, the future isn’t all that bright for any of us on this planet, so we might as well enjoy the good days we have left.
I think you're being downvoted because, while yes "hustle mentality is a choice", it's also been propagandized and thrown at millions of people as a metric for success. To tell a 24 year old code school grad that "hustle mentality is a choice" ignores how easily that codeschool grad is getting dismissed from employment opportunities in favor of people that gladly throw their entire life away to land a job. Lots of people just want the "well paid mundane job" you're suggesting is "ok" to have.
I’ve come to learn that creating the appearance of hustle while actually not doing that much work is the route to go. You have to be a ruthless self-promoter for it to be effective but it’s easy to just pretend to be busy all the time and talk up the very few things you do achieve. I’ve built a 20-year career from this, so I don’t believe it has a limited runway. I plan on riding this lazy train all the way to an exec role (director now so I don’t actually do much other than delegate anyway).
The whole thing is a fucking scam in the end. Hard work doesn’t pay off — pretty much every working-class person works 10x harder than me for 1/10 of the pay. The lazy person who can bullshit really well is always going to make more and burn out less.
As a founder with a failed startup, I relate. Talking to people helps. But as one of my friends said, very aptly, "There's no one else who can fix it but you".
Even though it sounds very abrupt and unhelpful, it's true. Finding inner peace, on your own, is what can actually help.
I really don't, but I assume it's true. Someone else once said that you can't find happiness outside [of yourself]. So being content is about finding inner peace?
I can't pretend to know your story. My story is not startup related. But "inner peace" frustrates me.
For my turmoils, it was about acceptance. Saying "Yeah... that happened" with the idea the past doesn't define me.
To make the past separate do something, anything, that "past you" wouldn't guess, even just once. Maybe put cupcake-sprinkles on your morning cappuccino or on a PB&J sandwich. Change your desktop wallpaper to unicorns and rainbows. Sing along to a death metal song before breakfast.
.
This does two things:
1. Bookends an era. The old era is now BSC.(Before SprinkledCoffee)
2. Means you can do things tomorrow that even you can't predict today.
Congrats. You are now living in a new era where even you can't foresee the possibilities.
No inner peace though. Your past will always be your past. You will continue to have feelings about it though it does get easier over time. Maybe see a therapist if you can.
I like Desiderata, one unequivocal phrase of which is:
"You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here."
True, I have failed 2 startups (and on my way making the 3rd one). Finding inner peace is what held you together. After some struggling time after my 2nd failure, it get better for me.
One trick I told myself is that realizing the failure last time is the lowest point in my life, and eventually the dots will connected
I always sort of thought that calling yourself a CEO or managing director of a small company sounded pretty lame and pretentious, but that founder worked quite well as a modest but accurate job title.
I don't know if that was ever true or if it was only true in my head but either way I think that the term founder has picked up some baggage in the last decade.
I've been dealing with depression off and on for a good 10 years now. My company was almost completely destroyed by nepotism and corruption and bad investors, beyond my control. This was back in Europe. I've tried to get traditional help (talking) and although I thought it was working I realized later on I was convincing myself it was working, while it was not, and that the person helping me would never understand me as a founder or understand what it is to start a business and then see it being destroyed at the point it is about to become really successful. They would never understand the endless hours someone spends on writing every single line of code, spending all savings, and the endless anxiety that comes with all that. I've looked around for specialized help but it doesn't seem to exist. Most founders are too busy to really talk about it, and the one psychologist/therapist I did find who is familiar with the tech world was going to be too expensive for me to afford, and was not in my health care network. What we really need IMHO is a specialized non profit that deals with mental health issues of founders, perhaps run by a variety of ex-founders, both those who were succesful and those who were not.
I'm a two-time failed founder. The first was a humanitarian drone nonprofit, and the second was a software development team internal to government. The first failure absolutely wrecked me. Your comment resonated because nothing prepared me for the unique experiences and traumas of presiding over a startup failure. I truly felt like I was on my own, trying to navigate the prolonged journey through failure, healing, and renewal.
I ended up writing a book to help other failed founders, titled "Eating Glass: The Inner Journey Through Failure and Renewal." Book here [0] and 60-pg sample here [1]. I plan to share it via "Show HN" soon, but given your plea for resources, I'd love to send you a free digital copy. Just send me an email address at mark@markdjacobsen.com. My passion with this book is really just to help other failed founders on their journeys.
>Fail fast, fail often, fail forward. That is the mantra in Silicon Valley.
We celebrate failure like Viking raiders toasting comrades fallen in glorious battle. We clank our frothy steins and hail their courage and honor. We weave epic tales of their battlefield prowess and the journeys of their immortal spirits to Valhalla. We yearn for a death half as good as our fallen heroes.
Any real warrior knows a battlefield death is not glorious. It is stupid mistakes, ill chance, screaming misery, urine and shit, fear and indignity. Dismembered youth strewn along the beach sob for their mothers.
Do you think the years of effort founders put in is psychologically distinct from the years of devotion people put into other things that can result in crushing disappoint like marriages, jobs, children, religion or sports?
I have no idea about other people's struggles, just sharing my story here and why I feel there is not enough being done for founders specifically. The things you list are things that most psychologists or therapists have experience with, and that is my point.
As someone who is depressed, founding a company is very low on the list of things I would like to do.
Reasons:
- it's practically impossible for me to be excited about any business/software idea/project/opportunity
- depression diminishes my productivity which is extremely important for a founder
- the instability from building a company creates a negative feedback loop with one's depression
I need stability and routine; I need to put in a lot of effort just to have a normal life and keep a job. Running a company becomes almost impossible in those circumstances.
Maybe we have very different experiences and perspectives. If you're healthy and things are going well, then stability and routine look like something boring that maybe even takes away from the quality of your life. If you're struggling to function and having a normal day is an achievement on its own, then things look a lot different.
I think that founders, by their very nature, expect big things to happen and when they don't the fall is greater for them than those who don't have big expectations.
Personally I'd rather hang with those who tried and failed than those who'd never try.
Your comment reminded me of research by Eva de Mol, Jeff Pollack, and Violet T. Ho that resonated with me.[0] They studied "destiny beliefs" as an explanatory variable for entrepreneur burnout. Those words perfectly captured what I felt when I started my nonprofit (now failed). It was as if the heavens opened, and I was divinely appointed for the task. That gave me incredible energy but made for a devastating fall. These days I try to carry my expectations more lightly.
Although I recognize the author's best intentions, the narrative of founders being somehow "special" never sits right with me. Yes, the founder/CEO has the responsibility of the entire company on their shoulders, but everyone else has their own world on their shoulders, too. It's not only the founder who has a dream, who wants to accomplish great things, who will beat themselves up when they fail.
Paul Simon, American Tune:
| And I don't know a soul who's not been battered
| I don't have a friend who feels at ease
| I don't know a dream that's not been shattered
| Or driven to its knees
Or maybe those founders who claim they can't form a group need to get together to talk about how it feels to not be listened to and how they are constantly dealing with people trying to one-up them. Maybe they feel they're always solving everyone else's hard problems but nobody's solving theirs.
I'm trying to understand your perspective and what you're trying to say with this comment. Are you implying that these founders are narcissists? This seems like a pretty big leap.
Edit: I think I get where you're coming from now, but when you're dealing with depression, unless that social circle of narcissists is the primary cause, focusing on "fixing" the narcissistic behavior is not really a great way to deal with the primary issue.
Sure, it's a great goal, but it's probably unrelated to the founder's immediate needs.
Don't ask a drowning person to coordinate their own rescue.
The article made mention of the fact that almost all of the startup founder/CEO social groups are environments of one-upmanship when what many people really need is support.
The comment was referencing this part of the article.
I think I get where they're coming from now, but ultimately I feel that it's a misguided take.
- TFA: Founders suffer from depression, and some have a difficult time getting support from their peers, because their peers are narcissists.
- Parent comment: "Depressed founder claims they can't form a group..." links to an article that's focused on narcissists, not really a resource for a depressed founder.
The trouble with the parent comment is that it's focused on "fixing" the situation with the narcissist social circle, when it may be more productive/appropriate to focus on the founder's immediate needs.
Sure, it's useful to think about ways to improve the behaviors seen in the social circle, but that's not really top of mind for a depressed person.
If I'm depressed, and I go to a friend for support, and they aren't in a place to support me, my next step isn't going to involve trying to change how my friend behaves, or trying to make it possible for them to support me.
I didn't actually read the link that the commenter had posted before writing the explanation (under the ironic assumption that you hadn't read the article, or skipped over that bit).
I would say though, as a founder myself, I'm not sure how much of it is narcissism how much of it is the fact that we are excited by our success (and therefore want to share it with others), but tend to measure success quantitatively.
In many cultures, quantitative statements about success come across as arrogant and narcissistic in a way that, say, buying an LV belt doesn't.
My former business partner deals with the stress by smoking a lot of weed, which may or may not have affected the presentations he gives in public. You can judge for yourself:
More generally, some combination of fundraising plus Ted Talks (and other venues that look for speakers who have something "visionary" to say) gives everyone an incentive to develop an aesthetic of being "visionary". It's not healthy. This is very much what I tried to parody in my comedy:
As a sort of failed founder I think the hardest thing is the resilient loneliness.
You build this castle in your psyche and have to implement it in real life and no one knows the full picture. Initially super exciting and then reality.
I 100% understand why suicide is a very real option without good support.
Don't seek other founders, we are a boring bunch--for the most part--and too hectic. Also they will induce anxiety in you.
Online games changed my life when I was deep in/under the valley of startup desperation. I met people I could talk about non-work things. Or whom I could joke with about my job. That also helped, trying to see the funny side of the harsh life of a company founder from the outside.
That was four years ago. Company is doing better than ever these days, not particularly thanks to me. And I don't feel too lonely these days.
Another thing that worked for a friend of mine: writing fiction. He says his characters live in his mind, like he is the hardware running the world of his books, so he never feels alone. And he also gets to interact a lot with fellow writers in the real world. Fiction writers are a very different bunch than software developers, it seems, they are more concerned about people feelings and such.
I need to get out of the house... I need stuff that requires my full attention because otherwise I start thinking about solving coding issues, new revenue streams, assessing and reflecting on my outsourced team members, etc.
Watching sports helps but there's a huge high during it, then a massive low as soon as it ends...
Yeah, it is important to get grounded. Friends, activities, sport which seems of secondary importance but in the long run primary.
I found climbing to be the best of all things. It shut my mind down (as I was very focused!)
I'm not even a hustler (lots of procrastination wasting many days), but I'm always thinking, "if I have to do stuff, surely it should be working" so I shut down sports and fun stuff.
I'm similarly running a one-man show and it's definitely a lonely path at times. Especially as you've built this entire universe of ups and downs that nobody can relate to.
Running a successful solo-business is a lonely route by definition. Few people are on a similar path, fewer still reach the summit. For me, thinking back to how much lonelier it felt to sit in a busy office knowing that there's got to be a different way, provides perspective.
Besides, perhaps loneliness is the cost of admission: a business is a path to wealth, freedom and possibly meaning. Happiness is not included.
Maybe you're right and I expect too much (i.e., everything) from my own business. But in the end, although I have more control, it is still a job, with ups and downs, things I hate, things I love, etc.
Doing my own venture helped me realize the things I love. And being a founder was a phase, a challenge. Super proud I did it but it just isn’t the way I want to live my life moving forward.
> First, if you’re suicidal, WhatsApp me at +1[...]
I'm not sure this is something this person should be saying. Not a lawyer but I'd want to talk to one about liability issues in putting that out on the internet. Even for trained professionals, "if this is an emergency, please call 911" is pretty much SOP for actively suicidal people.
Not saying it's not a laudable sentiment, either - if anything we need more people willing to talk about this stuff with strangers. But the law may put one in a weird position here - and even beyond that, this is America, where everyone sues everyone else. Suppose this guy talks to someone, that person offs themselves, and then their family comes knocking, wondering what happened on that phone call?
i've volunteered quite a bit on prevention lines. he absolutely should not be asking potentially suicidal people to WhatsApp him. if you're not trained you can have the best intentions and still bring about the worst outcome.
Unhappy humans have been speaking to other humans for thousands of years without anybody setting up arbitrary "trainings" about it and meaningless certifications that allow us to pretend that we can stave off the psychological chaos involved in being alive.
I think it will be okay. And even if it's not okay, it already wasn't okay in the first place.
Not sure if the advice from the article is applicable (paraphrasing: "if too much, quit". By that time you are in too many obligations to too many people). Here is different advice instead.
Do not raise VC money if you can. Bootstrap and enjoy the process of building and discovery even if it ends up being a smaller thing. As Shatner says, at the end it all does not matter. Stay independent, stay free, stay focused and stay true to yourself.
Edit: Bootstrapping does not need to be a "smaller thing" necessarily. Last time I bootstrapped something it ended as an 8 digit acquisition (of which I owned 100%). It is the same outcome as a 9 digit acquisition where you own a single digit equity percentage.
Not to mention the lack of any depression because the process is by definition focused on yourself and your capabilities. You pace it any way you want. You make it as challenging as you want it to be.
As a serial founder/ employee number 2 or 3, I'm seriously addicted to early startup. Plus I'm older than most of y'all so the hiring thing is even harder.
What I did to remain viable in the periods between startups is, I got really good at a couple technical things that are in high demand and I consult, for small startups who just raised money and really need something to work. So far my eccentric history seems intriguing to my clients and not a red flag as it would be for Faang.
I suspect this strategy will continue to work as long as start-up capital is flooding the zone. Once there's a pullback, I'm likely to be in trouble.
So of course I'm raising money again for another startup. Wish me luck.
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Here is what happened on my journey so far - will try to keep it short but it might help somebody else in the same boat.
I wasn't enjoying my job (as an employee) - the biggest problem I had was a nagging feeling that the people in the industry I was working in were setting an agenda that farmers would simply never be able to follow.
I was actually suffering from depression but I didn't know it at the time. I had a huge argument with my boss and quit. I had been working on the product for a little while but didn't really have anything concrete.
Within a couple of months of resigning I had an MVP and a co-founder. We managed to get a little VC funding and went on the startup adventure.
Turned out the co-founder was a complete fraud. He was supposed to be my hardware guy (I was software) but he didn't know anything about hardware that I didn't already know. He couldn't even read a circuit diagram. I was kind of stuck at that stage, we were overseas developing the product and I thought rather stupidly I could get him to fit in doing something else.
He was useless at everything. Couldn't write a program to save his life, didn't understand the product designers, couldn't help with anything. I eventually had to sideline him into doing things like grant applications and whatnot which he did manage to finish although it took a few arguments every time to get him to finish anything.
I set a pretty punishing schedule for the field trials. It was a whirlwind really, lots of travel, got everything working despite having to drag that useless turd all over the place. A couple of years ago he quit and became a massive PITA while we tried to get the legal stuff sorted out to cancel his unvested shares - another long story of his stupidity and various own goals.
Anyway, shortly after he quit we did have customers and revenue and it looked like it had some momentum but I contracted a little illness over that Christmas and found myself unable to get out of bed and was at divorce level with my long suffering wife. It was bad. I had contemplated steering the car over a few ravines. That undiagnosed depression took a massive hold on me.
I went to the doctor who was instantly understanding of the utter despair I was in at the time. He referred me to a psychologist who set me on a path of recovery. It isn't always easy and that mood occasionally re-appears (especially after you get knocked back by another investor) but I feel like I have the tools and the understanding to keep it more or less in check.
The funny thing about that period of depression was that it was the most focused and creative period of my 50 year life. I wrote some really excellent code, built an entire system from firmware up to server software and it worked the very first time we tried it on animals. The first time. An incredible achievement that I am not sure I would have been able to complete without the focus and creativity that the depression was a part of. So I'm kind of ambivalent about episodes of depression being entirely destructive, they weren't for me.
Not true in my opinion. It's mostly that what is perceived as success may be birthed out of sacrifices, compromises, and loneliness. Many bootstrappers I know have managed to be successful but lost loved ones whilst getting there.
It does. It have to be this way, but it often takes obsessive behaviour for many to get results. And that's just unhealthy, whether you succeed or fail.
There's likely a confounding variable. As someone who runs in circles with a lot of founders, what drives people to start companies is general life dissatisfaction and a search for meaning that they aim to find by taking the leap to start their own company which they hope will create meaning in their lives.
Given that 80-90% of startups fail, it's like the old xkcd. [1] You started with 1 problem (dissatisfied with life), went to solve it, and now you have 2 problems (dissatisfied with life & a failed company).
In bodies with testicles, low T (from a number of possible causes) can be even worse than just depression: inability to concentrate, confusion, alertness, consciousness, memory, anxiety, social, and sleep problems. You don't want this.
Maslow's hierarchy things help: Sleep (where possible), diet, water, exercise (HIIT cardio and weightlifting), get outside, routine, defuse catastrophizing thoughts with reality, and not everything is as hard as it may seem (no mind, grasshoppa).
Almost any hormonal imbalance will lead to the symptoms you described. Also AFAIK soy and most of the other foods you listed causing low T is a myth.
You do bring up a very good point though: sometimes depression is a mental symptom of a physical problem. Bad hormones can make you hopeless, they can take enjoyment and passion out of everything, they can completely alter your thinking and personality (I know from experience).
Which is another reason to not commit suicide when you're depressed. Even if you cannot physically imagine yourself happy, seek a doctor to check if your hormones are off. And if they can't find anything, seek another doctor (there are many many things that can go wrong with your body and cause depression, one doctor won't check them all). People's lives have been changed because they found weird holistic treatments which cured their rare hormone imbalance, which caused their depression.
Causing? No. I never said that. Reducing? Yes. It's important if there's an underlying condition causing low T to not lower it even further. Excessive PUFS or omega-3 leads free T to be SHBG-bound. Albumin-bound and free are the only readily, universally bioavailable forms.
If you commit suicide, you throw away all future changes to a different state.
Why in the world are you being down voted?
People who are down voting this post, get a fucking life, really.
He has a point, bad food is underrated as the cause of depression, even if you disagreed with him, the least that you can do is to just ignore him, rather than actively down vote him.
The irony of you peddling one set of unsubstantiated opinion and then crapping on someone else’s (who at least gave a link)…
When dealing with failures of the body and brain, an experimental approach by a capable individual is worthwhile: even if you mitigate your issue by placebo then that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Try whatever isn’t damaging, within reason.
If you don't exhibit any symptoms and your lab tests are fine, couldn't you just ignore basically 100% of this advice? I feel like some of these things are rather drastic changes (e.g. canola oil, carbs in general) that would be better left for consultation with a medical professional.
Lab tests of T are a snapshot in time. T values vary dramatically over the day, but their average values are influenceable.
Feel free to go without sleep, add stress, binge drink, and eat only pizza, and then see how much T remains.
A male-born individual can choose murder their SHGB-unbound T by shunting it into cortisol or estrogen production with lifestyle choices, in addition to genetics, health, and acute conditions, if they want more inflammation, less calm, more anxiety, shorter lives, and less focus.
> inability to concentrate, confusion, alertness, consciousness, memory, anxiety, social, and sleep problems
Has anyone every genuinely done any research to check if an increase in theses resulting symptoms from decreasing T levels across men over the past few decades is highly-correlated to our seeming decline in productivity and generally stagnating GDP growth?
Can it be affecting the contributions of 50% of the population? Can it be affecting scientific, industrial, cultural, community, and familial contributions from men across society more than we realize?
And what would we actually do if we did realize this?
How would that be controlled-for when there are shifts in unskilled and semi-skilled work around the globe, automation, local demographics changes, aging population, increasing densities of people (tending towards depression which also reduces aggression (T)), and massive income inequality increasing the economic stresses on the average person (that alone would kill T in all genders)?
> Can it be affecting the contributions of 50% of the population?
How would this be measured without a duplicate control Earth? Hypothetically: if everyone in sadder areas had as much food and money as they needed to be comfortable, I guarantee T levels would be much higher in men and women, there would be a lot more sex, a lot more happier people, and a lot more babies in 9 months.
> And what would we actually do if we did realize this?
The average person would probably do what they always do: shrug and do nothing. The plutocrats would only care if their top employees weren't performing optimally and would throw more money and/or better conditions at them.
So I have a bit of a unique perspective here; I’m a trans woman who has had “the surgery” so my body no longer produces its own testosterone (cisgender women get a little bit from their ovaries). So I take T in gel form, and I definitely notice if I don’t take it.
Symptoms of low T for me are difficulty sleeping, migraines, low sex drive and overall low energy. But it doesn’t take a whole lot to get me out of that range; just a tiny dab of gel rubbed in to my shoulder (for comparison, a man with low T would use an entire 1g tube every day). Low T that’s not super low doesn’t necessarily make any of that worse, and very high levels of T will actually convert into estrogen (which is why bodybuilders who abuse steroids can grow breasts and have shrunken genitals, and also increases emotional volatility).
And I think you’re right; there is a population benefit to lower levels of testosterone overall at a societal level that reduces conflict. Furthermore high T levels have a positive feedback loop with physical labor (building muscle is way easier the more T you have), so it makes sense your body would produce less if it isn’t trying to constantly repair muscle damage from strenuous physical activity. I would say that high T levels would be a liability in an office job; they make people quicker to anger and outright aggression is not taken positively in knowledge work. There may be benefits for physical labor, but definitely diminishing returns if you work a desk job.
