On Depression and Founders
startupstrats.substack.com
startupstrats.substack.com
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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 would also say that the best businesses hire failed founders. They're among the most valuable early employees imaginable.
brandon@localizejs.com
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.
hypomania can allow a founder to break through walls that any stable human would fine devastatingly exhausting.
obviously it's contextual & high risk high reward.
Talking about mania as pure increase in productivity ia itself absurdly reductive.
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 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.
Probably because your wife wasn't there in the trenches like you were. You created the wealth, she just benefitted from it.
Please note that I'm not ragging on women. Children of rich families would also probably have the same attitude, regardless of gender.
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.
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.
Maybe better if they could just refer some independent therapists who have experience with founders.
We're perhaps still under the influence of some older generations' way of living...
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.
Do you think you would have been as disappointed if you had ignored your goals and settled for a more “normal” life?
when 'high status' is the benchmark, there's going to be an element of let-down & disgust with one's self on arriving.
i'm seeing less and less smart people think in terms of status.
Or a problem with winning the rat race is you have to be a rat.
Unhappiness is worse than for naught.
I hope you are healing.
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.
"Hustle Mentality" really ruins a lot of the magic of this statement (hence why this post needed to exist in the first place). That and ad revenue.
> You are important, you are intelligent, and you are loving. You’re worth worrying about.
Well said.
I'm continually perplexed how some folks trade their happiness and well-being for perceived improvements in status or money.
I did and I'm not doing that bullshit again.
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.
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.
Even though it sounds very abrupt and unhelpful, it's true. Finding inner peace, on your own, is what can actually help.
I still haven't.
I feel better. Distancing myself completely helped with the tough emotions of moving on.
If you need to talk or vent to anyone, email in profile.
quitting social media, focusing on giving love, rekindling curiosity & physical/mental health seems to be the way to go.
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."
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
There can be big marketing wins in associating yourself closely with your brand.
It's a big risk you take, and you must be confident enough in yourself to take it, because it can be soul crushing if your startup tips over.
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 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.
[0] https://www.amazon.com/Eating-Glass-Journey-Through-Failure/... [1] https://markdjacobsen.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Eating-...
Good heavens, sir, you are an excellent writer!
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.
I hope you're finding the help you need, whatever it is.
Stability and routine would probably lead me to depression. Our brains were built for a world that is messy and unpredictable.
If you are depressed, perhaps doing something unexpected and venturing into unknown is exactly what you need to do.
Personally I'd rather hang with those who tried and failed than those who'd never try.
[0] https://hbr.org/2018/04/what-makes-entrepreneurs-burn-out
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 kneesThere is help for that: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-healing-crowd/20...
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 comment was referencing this part of the article.
- 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.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8znQZ1RUckg
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:
https://www.amazon.com/How-Build-Really-Terrible-Dating-eboo...
I don’t know what to think... but I checked the video after reading your comment and... I laughed. ;-)
He send good vibes though.
Tried meetups... Too much posturing and no vulnerability.
Tried online groups... Too digital.
Very curious to see how people handle that loneliness. It's terribly hard at times.
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.
Watching sports helps but there's a huge high during it, then a massive low as soon as it ends...
Hard to force myself not 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.
Truth.
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 think it will be okay. And even if it's not okay, it already wasn't okay in the first place.
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.
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.
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.
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.
(even if the organization that you founded is doing well financially and well past it's founding stage.)
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.
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).
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).
Avoid: alcohol, walnuts, almonds, soy, licorice root (black licorice candy), mint, certain oils (canola, corn, cottonseed, soybean, flaxseed, sunflower, safflower, palm kernel, "vegetable"), sugar/HFCS, carbs, trans-fats, and excessive omega-3.
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.
If you commit suicide, you throw away all future changes to a different state.
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.
https://bestlowthelp.com/fenugreek-health-benefits-men-testo...
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.
That said, I am a super sceptic.
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.
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?
> 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.
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.
You need to get out more.