Don’t emotionally bootstrap your startup
danielstillman.com
danielstillman.com
And in the only spot he actually even uses the phrase "emotionally bootstrap", it appears to be a one-time thing that might be the same thing as "inner bootstrapping," which he talks about a bunch and contrasts to "outer bootstrapping," all while defining neither. I closed the page somewhat angrily and then was delighted to come back to the HN comments and see a chorus of WTF.
We’re getting to the point that the best tell it’s written by an average human is that it’s below the quality of a machine.
your emotional labor as a founder is clearly a huge one, you should be aware of it, but the article is foundementally ignoring that fact that there is a price for everything.
we all so the "pasty" elon musk ... it's not that it's the only way to build amazing things and so many people look that way playing video games ....
my point is, anyone wants to build something and not pay for it (emotionally, financially, reputation ....) is just unaware what the word build means.
First thing he says to his “coachee” is along the lines of “if I said what you just said to me, how would you feel!”
How about you just say what you think, instead of making her guess what you’re saying
I remember telling a therapist about various negative thoughts I'd had towards myself, and she said "Now imagine that a friend told you all those things. How would you respond?". The sudden shift in perspective from that simple question was huge. I went from "I'm clearly hopeless" to "Perhaps I do have worth".
Ontop of that, it's a powerful thing to encourage someone to do the work themselves rather than doing it for them. Similar to how people often learn mathematics better by solving problems than by reading textbooks.
A concrete example often occurs in sports. The one in the game misses all sorts of really obvious things that those watching clearly see.
I think how one accomplishes this in the moment is personal. If I'm sitting at my desk, I'll physically push my chair back and sit up a bit. In person I'll take a small step back probably unnoticed by whoever I'm talking to. Just small triggers to remind me to detach from moment and try and view it more objectively.
“Don’t work an unhealthy amount, and don’t let work get in the way of coping properly with other traumatic experiences casting a long shadow.”
Well I guess I’ll have to finally make a few withdrawals from society’s safety net after decades of deposits, oops, there isn’t one, or not one targeted at me.
Well I guess family and friends will fill the gap right? Yikes, hearing about bootstraps was actively unhelpful.
Well I guess I’ll “knuckle through” and if they find me dead, it will at least be at my desk, mid-keystroke when some blood vessel gave out.
And there’s nothing unique to either me or any of my cohort about any of this. It gets called Dickensian sometimes, but even that is a recent name for it.
Are there no fucking prisons? No workhouses?
I see a lot more more people advertising 'executive coaching' services than I see people looking for the same. Is the business coaching insdustry as pyramid-scheme-y as it seems (i.e. let me coach you on how to run a successful coaching business' similar to 'buy my course on how to make lots of money by selling courses') or is it actually valuable (and people who get coaching maybe just don't talk about it openly? Or there's a market of buyers who just happen to be completely separate from anyone I know or follow?)
Ding ding ding.
I'm sure there are plenty of scammers and generic self help people, but a good exec coach is invaluable. You can get help and feedback on things as a CEO that are really difficult to get from your own company, leadership team, or investors — because the coach works for you, and the explicit goal is to make you better. Think how to better manage, how to raise, dealing with personality issues, org structure and pivots.
Try doing that with your board or investors (what if they think I'm bad at my job and fire me, or don't invest in my next round?) or your team (what if they lose faith in me?). A confident, experienced leader might not need this sort of help, but I highly recommend it for newly funded startup CEOs past 5 people.
So who are you left with? A small of number of “retired” ex-executives who might actually be quite good at ‘coaching’ and a huge number of grifters?
Some of the good coaches are multi-exit former CEOs. They use coaching as a way to angel invest and still be involved in early companies.
I'm sure there are plenty of inexperienced coaches with poor results... but I know at least a handful that are great.
I don’t see any shame or other negative quality about it, but to P’s point, I also very rarely have any reason to talk about it.
My take is that startups are intrinsically hard: you’re out of your comfort zone, you don’t know if you’re making good decisions, and you have to repeatedly deal with setbacks and other roadblocks. No amount of therapy-adjacent talking will change that. I wonder if I’m completely out of touch with the younger generation of founders.
Hope that helps.
It can be lonely anywhere, peer support is very helpful.
Founders have to make decisions and cope with crunches and quick decisions amidst many emotions.
It can be hard to unpick a bundle of new emotions to find ones gut feeling.
Especially as most situations will be new and unique. Time spent sharing with other founders is very valuable.
Peer groups and mentors should be in place from the get go
Think that's about all the thought I'll give it, though.
The problem with the situation is that the entrepeneur he describes is in this phase where the running of the business got so time consuming that it trumps longterm development, wether that's finding investment or developing the company structurally.
That's a hard spot to be in.
Get more life experience before you declare what’s not possible.
Preferring one over the other doesn't take away what is and what is not a medical condition.
This is like saying "Having have fallen down some stairs and having climb a mountaing. I would rather fall down some stairs." in relation to someone the chances you got a head injury from just walking up a mountain isn't very likely. Realistically, you could fall down some stairs and not hit your head. You could walk up a mountain and fall down and hit your head - walking up the mountain didn't cause your head injury but was what you were doing when you did the thing that caused your head injury. You can be mugged and not even get Accute Stress Disorder (ASD) never mind PTSD.
> Get more life experience before you declare what’s not possible.
I highly suspect I have a lot more life experience than you. To the point that there is a reason why I know the difference between PTSD and C-PTSD. And that you can't even be diganosed with PTSD for 6-months after the event. Before then it's ASD.
What will you do with your identity after the next major revision of the DSM?
Seriously, this is the problem with today's world. We have a bunch of people who struggle so much they need to pretend they have medical conditions they don't to make themselves feel better. Are you going to pretend you got MS or ALS next? Or just stick with mental conditions in the hope that people don't understand how much nonsense you're spouting?
The fact you can't understand if you're going to have a blog post about psychology and mental health, starting it off with stuff that is complete nonsense about mental health really shows they don't know what they're talking about. But instead of realising this was a nonsensical blog post by someone who couldn't grasp the bare basics of mental health. You're too busy trying to claim that startups are soo hard you get PTSD from it. It's so traumatic the stress you endured you were terrifed. Aww poor you. In otherwords, you're a wimp. You went through some stress and it broke you. Something that didn't threaten your safety terrifed you so badly that you're broken. Except, it's all nonsense. You're just holding on to this PTSD as a way of saying you were very stressed because you literally don't know what you're talking about.
I wasn’t trying to claim anything. You came along and with your acres of life experience stated (in reference to someone else) not only that you couldn’t see how someone committing to a business above everything else could cause them to lose literally everything and require treatment, but that it was impossible.
The article trivialized it, I’ll agree with you there. But your absolutist perspective is uninformed, inaccurate and apparently reflective of fairly mundane ignorance.
Your need to have bigger traumas than other people is something I have encountered before and something you’re clearly attached to. I hope you’re able to get free of it.
There has been no name calling or insults. But considering you think it's wrong to gatekeep medical conditions to those who have the medical condition, it's understandable why you can't make out the difference from pointing out what a claim that you get PTSD from the stress of running a startup means. It doesn't mean you had a hard time it means you broke in a way that you shouldn't break.
> I wasn’t trying to claim anything. You came along and with your acres of life experience stated (in reference to someone else) not only that you couldn’t see how someone committing to a business above everything else could cause them to lose literally everything and require treatment, but that it was impossible.
No. You can need treatment for stress/fatigue/etc. Startups can be damaging to your mental health. But you don't need treatment for help dealing with traumatic events because you stressed out over your OKRs and how you're making payroll.
> But your absolutist perspective is uninformed, inaccurate and apparently reflective of fairly mundane ignorance. > > Your need to have bigger traumas than other people is something I have encountered before and something you’re clearly attached to. I hope you’re able to get free of it.
There has been no trauma talked about. Running a startup is not traumatic. It is stressful. The fact you haven't realised this shows how uninformed you are about a very basic thing such as what is trauma. It's a defined word.
As I said, you just want to act like you can get PTSD so you can act like you did something stupid hard that most people can't. You want to make yourself feel better. And you think anyone telling you that you're talking nonsense is gatekeeping and that you can get a medical condition even though all the medical advice would point to that not being true. But damnit, screw the doctors, you can diganose PTSD in yourself and others because you're a startup founder.
Source: I still have trauma and panic attacks from one startup I co-founded. At the time the stress was so severe I got pneumonia, couldn't sleep etc etc etc.
It's terrifying that you don't understand the difference between stress and traumatic events. That you don't understand that it's not cute to compare yourself to people who have debilitating flashbacks.
The difference between "clinical PTSD" and your "PTSD" is one is actually PTSD and the other is you need some help destressing. If you even had half an insight into how bad PTSD actually is, you would trivalise it. With nonsense claims such as "I got PTSD from being stressed".
Secondly focussing on whether or not someone has been diagnosed is kind of missing the point.
Well, I think part of the criticism of the blog post is that it's written as if the person must actually have had clinical PTSD. Otherwise he wouldn't have any cause to get preachy about how terrible it is to joke about it and "knuckle through."
Startup life can be seriously fucked up and the long hours / low sleep / unhealthy routine it’s easy to fall into can really ruin your life. Coupled with founders fighting, drama boiling over months or years of invested time, etc.
What, it’s not traumatic enough for you because you didn’t get to hear a gunshot?
It is insulting to those of us who have it when someone says their stress and anxiety are anywhere close to the symptoms we have from PTSD. Just like it's insulting to say you have OCD when you like to have thing colour co-orientated.
Just because some people exaggerate doesn’t mean it can’t happen, and kindly, quit the whiteknighting when you’re doing exactly what you’re accusing others to do.
I pointed out it's very unlikely to get it from a startup and when someone said they had it I asked if it was diagnosed. They went on to say it wasn't.
> quit the whiteknighting
I don't think you know what that means. You're using it wrong.