Founders are taught to possess enough faith to will whatever they’re working on into existence but are rarely reminded to worship anything but themself. This creates a pressure cooker of responsibility that distorts reality to the point that they often find it hard not to confuse themselves for God — and we all know how that ends.

For the past decade, our idolatry of startups and innovation has meant the focus has been: What can we disrupt? How fast can we grow? How big can we get? How much can we raise?

Founders are taught to possess enough faith that they can build something very big very fast. This creates a pressure cooker of responsibility that distorts reality to the p... See more

Being a founder requires constant calibration between arrogance and humility, optimism and pessimism. You need the arrogance to believe that you have something important to say, but the humility to know most people won’t care.

Being a founder requires constant calibration between arrogance and humility, optimism and pessimism. You need the arrogance to believe that you have something important to say, but the humility to know most people won’t care. You need the optimism to convince yourself and others (employees, investors, customers) to believe in you. But you need pes... See more

Specifically for founders, our identity is often tied to our company’s success. But that’s just buggy code in our systems. You have to actively work to debug that and do whatever you can to decouple your self-worth and your identity from your achievements.

Being a founder requires constant calibration between arrogance and humility, optimism and pessimism. You need the arrogance to believe that you have something important to say, but the humility to know most people won’t care. You need the optimism to convince yourself and others (employees, investors, customers) to believe in you. But you need pes... See more

Startups might try to mitigate perceived reputation risk by overly scripting or muzzling their founders. That is thinking about it backwards. The much greater risk lies in stifling a founder’s originality, muting their passion, and depriving the company of its most powerful evangelist. The risks of being bland, boring, or business as usual far outw... See more

To be a founder, you have to be world-class in something. Make sure you’re spending the majority of your time doing that thing; this is your ‘zone of genius’. Not compromising will allow you to be a valuable contributor for a much more extended period of time and avoid burnout.