Founder Psychology

Founders defer pay, vacations, health, family, friendships. Everything. In the hopes it eventually works out. But the deferral rarely gets repaid. Fail, and you lose it all. Succeed, and you become an executive managing what you built. Either way, you become the thing you left.

No one is perfect and at the pace that startups operate at, mistakes happen often. What makes startups completely unique is that mistakes often mean progress, they mean you are testing the boundaries, trying new things.

I’ve never really thought about what “being” an entrepreneur means. I figured it was pretty simple — you are one or your aren’t.

When I started my first “real” company in the early days of the Internet era I was traveling with my immediate family to visit my mother in Bangladesh. I remember distinctly the fear I had but it wasn’t about flying or malaria or anything related to the actual journey. It was what my answer was going to be when someone asked me “what do you do for a living?”

This is the hardest question to answer for founders.

Title or outcome.

Adult Mayflies live for 2 days. They spend a year as larvae, burst onto the scene with the sole purpose of mating and then, 2 days later, dead.

I love the simplicity of this statement: Earn your views. Views can mean something different to everyone but it’s the “earn” part that hits for me.

The story of the Christmas I wrote a cheque I couldn’t cash — and what it taught me about the difference between “tight” and “broke.”

Nobody explains resilience better than Rocky.

There is no part of a startup that is easy.

Sometimes it’s not doing too little that hurts a startup. It’s doing too much at the same time.

It still haunts me.

For a long time I didn’t really understand what hard work is. Most young people don’t but it’s really not their fault.

Every founder has an origin story.

Startups are a series of back-to-back marathons.

There is no “end”, just a start and a whole lot of grey.

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