I have the misfortune of having cofounded Cambrian Genomics with Austen. I led all of our technical work. I have almost never spoken publicly about the experi

I have the misfortune of having cofounded Cambrian Genomics with Austen. I led all of our technical work. I have almost never spoken publicly about the experience. Cambrian Genomics was a small team working on building a high-throughput DNA cloning and synthesis pipeline using high-throughput sequencing and laser processing tools. That’s all we ever worked on, none of this other crazy stuff. We achieved an amazing amount of technical innovations on a shoestring budget and tiny staff - internally it was an amazing experience. In the beginning Austen was the right amount of crazy for an early startup CEO, but as we grew he never matured as a person or founder and became ever more erratic in public. In the last year of our existence and his life he oscillated in full bipolar fashion between insane manic episodes where he talked on stages and to investors about glowing cat feces, feminine microbio hygiene products, terraforming mars, etc. All in defiance of the rest of us in the company. He was clinically unhinged, though I don’t blame the press for not knowing that. His statements made himself a target… and when the PR machines turned against him he fell apart as a person and became a ghost. I tried everything I could to fix the mess, save the company, and help him out of it, but we came in one morning to find that he had hung himself in our office as a final parting gesture. He might have been a dreamer, but he was also a narcissist and a jerk. He destroyed everything we had set out to do with his behavior and he never thought about anyone but himself. To the young entrepreneurs: don’t be content to be a dreamer, and don’t be content to work with “dreamers”. Find builders with the strength, character, and vision to see things through... and if you ever feel the darkness closing around you in a startup, know that you really can walk away. Seek counsel. The end of a company should not be the end of your life.