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Glad the writer has written openly about this, and I hope he continues to get better and find more balance in his life. Businesses are tough endeavours, and th

Glad the writer has written openly about this, and I hope he continues to get better and find more balance in his life. Businesses are tough endeavours, and those who truly do it honestly and with love for their biz and their customers can seriously run the risk of draining themselves if they're not careful. It's also tough because there is an entire industry of "hustle porn" out there, and the world is moving so fast it is easy to not feel like you're getting left behind when your business isn't moving forward the same as others. VCs (like YC) and others are also in a numbers game. While I'm sure they're not planning for burnout and depression in their founders, their model practically requires whoever drinks from the cup to push until they either succeed or fail. A binary outcome is required, middling along is not allowed. Even pg himself has said a variation of the Vaynerchuk quote (can't remember if it was a blog post or tweet). It's a complex topic, but if you're reading this, find some solace in the fact that there are many others out there who have similar ups and downs, but more importantly, work to find balance in your life. This means time for eating well, sleeping, and relaxing time (video games, walks, gym, spending time with family). By the way, "relaxing time" is separate from "sleeping time" -- don't pick one or the other. This doesn't mean you shouldn't have strong work ethics or push hard when you need to, but constrain things and re-evaluate constantly. I sometimes have a hard week of 70-80 hours because of coding sprints or sales pushes, and then break for 2 days. Eg: Monday and Tuesday this week were chill days for me, as a break from the past 10 days. Overall, try to plan out the trajectory of your business and the work you are doing. Don't just flit from one priority to another, take a step back, take a deep breath, and plan for a definite outcome in a short period of time (2-4 weeks). Do this constantly, and you're basically tinkering with the the trajectory of your startup based on your efforts. If you can't do the above (maybe because you've got a few people already on the team, have customers and are just running about hair on fire every day dealing with operational and customer issues), I would recommend getting some professional coaching advice about how to eventually structure your biz to be more manageable. Bottom line, none of the stresses should be permanent or long-term (despite what banks, VCs, or any other funders may say), so definitely work towards building smaller bite-sized sprints for yourself and your team.

speedplane 7y ago
Founder burnout is simply a result of the stress of the increased responsibility you have. Your employees expect a pay-check every two weeks, and even if you pay yourself nothing, you have to make that happen. Lack of income stability destabilizes a lot. You don't have a boss, regardless of who is on your board of advisers or claims to be your mentor, all they can offer is words, the founder has the responsibility and has to make the decisions. You may have friends doing their own startup, and despite your best efforts to resist, you compare your own success to them. You make excuses for those that surpass you, feel schadenfreude when others fail, and then feel guilty for even having such thoughts. In practice, founder burnout is pretty rare. The stresses of running a business are real and can affect your life and decision making process, but the business challenges themselves are often even more difficult. Also, founders don't just start a company as any employee would start a job, they need to start with a huge reserve of enthusiasm or motivation. Emotionally, they start from a higher place, are subjected to higher than normal stresses, but their stress tolerance itself is not often the limiting factor.

speedplane 7y ago

Founder burnout is simply a result of the stress of the increased responsibility you have. Your employees expect a pay-check every two weeks, and even if you pay yourself nothing, you have to make that happen. Lack of income stability destabilizes a lot. You don't have a boss, regardless of who is on your board of advisers or claims to be your mentor, all they can offer is words, the founder has the responsibility and has to make the decisions. You may have friends doing their own startup, and despite your best efforts to resist, you compare your own success to them. You make excuses for those that surpass you, feel schadenfreude when others fail, and then feel guilty for even having such thoughts. In practice, founder burnout is pretty rare. The stresses of running a business are real and can affect your life and decision making process, but the business challenges themselves are often even more difficult. Also, founders don't just start a company as any employee would start a job, they need to start with a huge reserve of enthusiasm or motivation. Emotionally, they start from a higher place, are subjected to higher than normal stresses, but their stress tolerance itself is not often the limiting factor.