Startups are hard.... (Insert your Snow Clone about shopping here) HN has a lot of Founders_ Often when you talk about founders, you're talking about people w

Startups are hard.... (Insert your Snow Clone about shopping here) HN has a lot of Founders_ Often when you talk about founders, you're talking about people who are putting it all on the line. These are people who quit salaried day-jobs with scheduled amounts of vacation days and health care for the unknown. If they fail, not only do they go down, but their family goes down, so the stress is very high. For that reason, I try to do a hello-world type of check with founders at least once a week. Sometimes something as simple as "Hey, are you OK?" can snap people out of an otherwise spiraling-down depression. Sometimes it takes more. Hackers in general_ It is anecdotal, but smart people in general are depressed. It is also an anecdote shared by many—even the Simpsons made fun of this so there is a common thought in society that smarter people are often more depressed. Hackers typically want to solve problems. Often hackers have a better solution to a problem, but that solution will be ignored by society. That leads to frustration and multiple instances of frustration leads to depression.