Year 3 Startup Learnings — Celine Halioua

Extreme optimism expresses itself as unwavering self belief, the ability to look at a dense forest and see the path through it, and the ability to focus on the end goal even if the steps are challenging. This is necessary for convincing yourself to start a company and then bringing others (employees and investors) along. Optimism can in many ways “... See more

Great execution is powered by extreme pessimism. Pessimism is key to figure out all the ways you could fail, and hedging them proactively. It’s about running down a problem until you understand every atom. Pessimism allows you to see around corners and grease the wheels of an otherwise creaky train.

A Founder/CEO must be capable of both extreme optimism and extreme pessimism, carefully balanced against each other, the ratio tuned to the needs of the problems ahead of them.

As CEO, I have the most context of anyone at the company, so all uncertainty is fully contextualized for me. An associate-level team member may have 10% of the context I do. Even if you communicate diligently and transparently, variables like fundraising climates, board member dynamics, program prioritization, how decisions are made, personal prefe... See more