Part I Running to a Standstill
In which we look at how inner challenges and frustrations can push us to the limit – and how we can postpone some ideas.
1 When Suicide Seems Like a Good Option A few years ago, a founder, who I'll call Mark, committed suicide. Mark had given up, was done, could not solve for anything anymore. His inner resources exhausted and spent, the range of problems he perceived were all massive, impossible. For Mark, the best option, in fact the only option was to end it all. Mark was building a company that could have changed the way we design and develop medicine. To say that he was driven and passionate would be an understatement. He had raised money from some of the leading investors in Silicon Valley. As an investor in the company's seed round, I saw his fierce intensity up close. Working 24/7, his entire life was entwined in his start-up, the milestone, the next financing round, the next step function of value creation. His identity and that of the company were fused as one. The company's success was Mark's success. The mantra of his start-up life was quemar los barcos – burn those goddam boats. No going back. All in. No plan B, no safety net. Those are for the weaklings. All of this was music to the investors' ears. Money flowed quickly. Mark had courage, conviction, energy, enthusiasm, and technical acumen – all the founder attributes revered in the business and technical circles. When he stood up to present his ideas, audience members would nod in agreement of a brave new world — reverently, silently. In hushed tones, they would exchange delighted notes that Mark was on to something big, groundbreaking. By any standards, here was a guy, TheGuy, who was well on his way to make a dent in the world. And then one day, Mark was gone. The candle snuffed out, just like that. We just saw one side, the bold and brazen exterior, the showman, while on the inside, the picture was vastly different. He was broken. Tired. Some evenings, when he would go visit his parents, he would just sit on the couch, for long periods of time, silently staring into the void. Overworked and exhausted, he would ask to just be left alone. He did not want to talk to anyone, nor go for a walk, watch a show, or read a book. He just wanted to decompress. The Silicon Valley cheerleaders had egged him on with generous superlatives like man, you're crushing it. But the chasm between his self-view, his abilities, and the scale of problems kept widening. He got crushed instead. BREAKING THE TABOO: DISCUSSING SUICIDE To start a book with a founder's suicide is no way to start a book. It's dark, gloomy and only exacerbates the downward spiral. Yet the conventional norms of burying the difficult emotions, pretending such challenges do not exist, need to be dismantled. In bringing the challenge to the forefront, we can allow the discomfort to rise. And then settle down. We can allow the emotion to surge, even for a few moments. And we can begin to talk about the topics we should no longer be hiding from, because when we open ourselves up, we give each one another permission to bring forth the uncomfortable turmoil. And when we allow these frustrations to vent away, it might help, heal, or even save a life. A start-up is a grand experiment, a gamble of a different kind, with our time on earth and other people's money, in markets that have yet to be formed, with products that do not exist. We do this without fully understanding ourselves, and what is for us or what is against us. And more often, we end up on a dead-end street, frustrated and crushed. Suicide is a taboo, a pariah of a subject, but a reality. On the surface of it all, we treat this subject with heavy doses of platitudes, quotable quotes, quick-fix solutions, or conclusive statistics. To confess any remote suicidal thoughts causes immense discomfort, more often to the listener. When we do not listen to the pain, the force that could have changed the world gets forced out of this world. We are humans first, and then we label ourselves as founders, employees, and everything else. From Linkedin: A step towards being better humans first…. When Dreams Turn to Despair How does it happen? Desires and ambitions propel us into actions (start a company). Actions without results lead to restlessness (slow pace of adoption, maybe). Prolonged restlessness leads to dejections and disillusionments (this will never work). All these culminate in despair (no one cares). And then the final question: Is this worth it? The mind that could surge up in confidence to start a company, that could discriminate the merits of an opportunity, build a compelling narrative, raise capital from some of the world's best investors in Silicon Valley – that same mind had lost its ability to find a way out of this chaos. Why does the powerful force that could have made a dent in the world turn inward and self-destruct? Varying degrees of adversity – from product market fit, to raising capital, to scaling, and dealing with competition A conflict in relationships – co-founders, board, team or family members Threats to perceived notions of success Financial or legal challenges The daily roller coaster ride of wild swings that are not experienced in most careers Source: Twitter, Inc. These obstacles impact almost all of us at some point in our lives. And we often feel like it's the end. In his post “What's the Most Difficult CEO Skill?,” entrepreneur-turned-venture capitalist Ben Horowitz writes that managing your own psychology is the most difficult skill. CEOs often succumb to that WFIO. Pronounced as whee-f-eyo, it’s that sinking feeling. We are f**ked … It's Over! And in such situations, one option that surfaces is to self-destruct. Sigmund Freud wrote that “the tendency to self-destruction exists to a certain degree in many more persons than in those who bring it to completion.” In the United States, the ratios of suicide attempts to suicide deaths are approximately 100:1.1 A lot of us think about it. A few actually do it. It is okay that we have an occasional thought.2 We are just afraid to talk about it. Thinking, Ruminating, Full-on Planning When we are in a funk, we keep thinking about suicide. Those thoughts might keep spinning in our heads, and soon some of us even start to research the how-to options. We might identify the various steps, and plan the final exit in great detail. Tim Ferriss, investor, podcaster, and author of the best-selling book The 4-Hour Workweek, writes about how he had gotten past the “deciding mode” and into “full-on planning mode.” “The world was better off without a loser,” he had concluded. In his planning mode, Tim Ferriss went to Princeton's Firestone Library. As one of the promising
