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Being insecure while doing a complicated thing, especially if everyone else doing it appears very confident, is called Imposter Syndrome[1]. More than likely, t
by tehwalrus 12y ago
Being insecure while doing a complicated thing, especially if everyone else doing it appears very confident, is called Imposter Syndrome[1]. More than likely, the other people are faking confidence too - I certainly am in most situations!
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome - for clarity, not actually a disease, just something everyone feels once in a while.
- 7Figures2Commas 12y agoImposter syndrome involves a competent individual who significantly underestimates his or her competence. It has nothing to do with the complexity of an undertaking, or how confident one is relative to others. Are there founders who exhibit imposter syndrome? I'm sure there are. But can every instance of founder insecurity be attributed to this? Absolutely not. It might not be the politically correct thing to state, but there are lots of founders who have good reasons to be insecure. They have no domain expertise. They are trying to start a business with little to no capital. And so on and so forth. Telling these folks that they're merely suffering from imposter syndrome does them a disservice.
- tehwalrus 12y agoPerhaps. But this founder (OP) doesn't seem to fall into that category to me, given how she writes. Also, note that I said "while doing" - not "while trying to". Imposter syndrome does indeed require a moderate success, a total failure does not suffer from it.