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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.

Yes, but wouldn’t they still end up at a startup? Pay is lower, stress is higher. Working not living rules the day.

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.

brandon@localizejs.com

Mania does not make you more effective or productive. People in mania stage are more likely to harm the startup then to improve it.

super reductive comment.

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.

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.

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.