13 ms·

A Long, Ugly Year of Depression That’s Finally Fading

313 points by squiggy22 12y ago

ryanobjc 12y ago
We talk a lot about successes. It's also good to talk about failures, both partial and more complete. And redemption. The road to victory is long, and I would put my back against Rand because I know this struggle has made him better.
- jarek 12y ago
  I saw an idea of writing about rejections and failures in science earlier this year, e.g. http://composition.al/blog/2014/04/29/rejections/ http://composition.al/blog/2014/04/29/rejections/ I think there's still risk of others reading a list like that and thinking "look how much they _do_", but it's definitely an improvement on the usual pattern of sharing only successes and good news.
- taybin 12y ago
  I think the idea that after a business failure someone needs 'redemption' is harmful. Sometimes businesses fail and the person doesn't try to start another business, and that's okay.
x0x0 12y ago
Wow, props to Rand for sharing this. Rand, if you're reading this, two things occur: 1 - you're far from the first person to go for big-bang software releases (though listening to your cto is probably a good idea) 2 - in _Fooled By Randomness_ by Taleb (I believe, I could be misremembering) he describes the incredible level of stress that monitoring his investments daily created. I seem to recall the author writing that he simply was unable to monitor them every day and instead had to only look at some periodic summaries. Perhaps this may help people who get to mentally exhausted looking at numbers daily? I mean, it's good to notice immediately if they crater, though that can be scripted. Beyond that, there's probably not much value looking at them 7 days a week that you don't get looking at them once every seven days. I use the same technique on the elliptical machine; time crawls if I look at the timer, so it's an exercise of will to go as long as possible before looking. Hope he's in a better place now.
tst 12y ago
I'm also recovering from a depression which lasted for quite a while. It absolutely sucks because you think you're worthless, nobody loves you, you can't get anything right and the best would be if you just wouldn't exist anymore. And on top of that you isolate yourself. I know how hard it was to ask for help therefore I want to show you some things which helped me: - Realize that your depression is lying to you. It doesn't tell the truth. It makes you believe that something is logical even if it isn't. - Read 'Feeling Good' - terrible title, great book. It will probably work better than average on the average HN reader because it takes a 'rational' approach to depression (cognitive-behavioral therapy). It helps you to recognize destructive thought patterns and how to deal with them. - Garbage in, garbage out. What works for computers also works for your body. Yeah, you're a geek but you can eat some vegs instead of the 500th pizza. Also working out (or other sports) are pretty great. - Long term: Therapy which tries to work on the root cause and not just at symptoms. Finally, here's a rather extensive list with lectures, books, exercises, etc. which help dealing with depression [1]. Back when I was fed up with feeling crap I created a spreadsheet with the 8 activities and tracked those every day. Note: Every person seem to react to differently. I read about people who improved a lot by meditating - on the other hand, it didn't work for me. So, try some things out and don't give up. You can beat that liar in your head. [0]: http://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Good-The-Mood-Therapy/dp/0380810336 http://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Good-The-Mood-Therapy/dp/03808... [1]: http://www.reddit.com/r/getting_over_it/comments/1nd14u/the_best_stuff_i_have_gathered_to_help_me/ http://www.reddit.com/r/getting_over_it/comments/1nd14u/the_... PS: If you have any questions feel free to ask - if you want to send me a private one write at <username> @ panictank.net
- meh_master 12y ago
  I've been depressed for over ten years, I'm currently thirty years old. I left my job in January due to depression, though I didn't tell anyone. I haven't worked a day since then and am just living off savings as they dwindle. I haven't spoken to any of my former co-workers who were my only contacts in the Bay Area since I moved from the East Coast to work at a startup. I've spent all day every day numbing myself with weed, porn, mindless internet browsing, etc. I don't even code, every time I open up Xcode or Android Studio I just end up doing nothing. And I honestly just don't want to do anything. The last time I went out socially was in January of this year and even that was just with my then co-workers. And over the past ten and fifteen years it hasn't been any different. I can count on one hand the number of times I've been out socially over the past ten years that wasn't work related (and while employed the number of times I went out with co-workers also number in the single digits). The isolation is what kills me. I haven't had sex in several years and haven't had any intimate relationships in my entire life (the sex were just one nighters and nothing more, and I've never had a "best friend", not even in high school or middle school). Unlike a lot of people with depression, I don't have friends, family (all on East Coast), or girlfriends (I've never had one). I don't even talk with people online, not through FB, not anonymously on web forums or instant messaging. In the past week the only people I've talked to is the cashier at the local supermarket, and that was just to say I wanted a bag and say "thanks see ya later". In fact this is the first time I've written about depression online, I've only told a few people (my mom and a doctor) that I even have it. I've had a hard time dealing with it. I'm trying to get into meditation and what not. But I mostly fear the effect of this extreme isolation. There's a lot of evidence that it kills your brain (literally). I'm reading a book called "The mindful way through Depression". I bought it over two years ago and only started reading it two months ago. I'm still only halfway through. The worst part of depression is that it saps my energy to do anything, even when I do read the book I'll read several pages and not remember a thing of what I read. Sorry about the wall of text if anyone reads this, but it's 5:46 AM and I'm not doing anything else. I haven't gone to sleep yet...I'm just mindlessly browsing the web (I discovered a new TV show earlier today and am marathoning it right now). Either way I still hold some optimism for the future.
swombat 12y ago
Forgive my ignorance and bluntness, but reading the above, it sounds more like an anxiety disorder than like depression. Both are serious, but I'm not sure if it helps to confuse the two? I've not experienced either seriously, but I know people who have. Depression seems to be more about things not mattering anymore, everything being pointless, the world seeming drab and just not fun anymore, rather than feeling that everything is going to go to shit. Anxiety, though, (and I'm speaking from experience here, having had some light anxiety attacks caused by too much regular caffeine usage) seems to be characterised by a feeling of impending doom, that everything is wrong, it can't be fixed, it's all hopeless, etc. But in my (mild) anxiety attacks, like Rand, I still cared about the outcome. I just felt like there were too many problems to solve, overwhelmed, ready to say "fuck this", give up the entire thing, and start again from scratch with something completely different. PS: Otherwise, props for the very honest and open article. Running a business is a lot of responsibility and very stressful and it can be comforting to know you're not the only who seems surrounded by world-ending scenarios.
- rbinv 12y ago
  Could you please elaborate on your caffeine-related anxiety attacks?
  - flavor8 12y ago
    I can speak from my experience. I was for a long time drinking 2-3 cups of coffee in the morning. During the morning, generally things were good and I could crank out code. However, during early-mid afternoon I'd often get overwhelmed, tired, and unfocused, especially when multitasking, and often would lapse into a browse-reddit/agh-i'm-not-being-productive/browse-more-reddit cycle. Cutting down to one 1 cup in the morning has made a real difference - I no longer get the early afternoon slump, and can stay focused for longer in the afternoon without being overwhelmed by a long task list.
  - swombat 12y ago
    Sure. I've found that when I drink coffee regularly over a long period, my intake invariably increases. Eventually, it reaches 2 cups of double-espresso-with-milk or equivalent a day, and goes past that too... after a few weeks or something months of that, I start getting strange episodes at random times that I describe as "light anxiety attacks". The way they feel is that I get an impression that something, SOMETHING is wrong. I'm not sure quite what, but I don't realise that I'm not sure what until I realise I'm having one of these attacks. There's an unpleasant feeling of tension that starts in the chest and radiates out to the rest of the body - all the way to fingers and feet, through shoulders, knees, etc. That's the physiological aspects. Mentally, I feel like everything is going wrong. Nothing looks like it's going to work out. I tend to be more aggressive and curt with people, and extremely negative of course, since nothing seems like a good idea. In one of these episodes, I could easily find myself thinking that this business that I run, that employs 17 people and turns over over a million pounds, is doomed and that I should just leave it and run away from it and do something else. When I think something so ridiculous, usually some part of me wakes up and says "hey, that's not quite right", and then I realise I am having an anxiety attack. If awake, once I realise that's what's going on I can deal with it fairly effectively. Get rid of any physical discomforts (e.g. go pee if I need to pee), have some water, take some deep breaths, and refocus on positive things. It used to take longer, but by now, once I realise it's happening, I can get out of it in a couple of minutes, even while I'm in the middle of conversation with others, so it's not noticeable to others. If I'm asleep, it's more bothersome, because I'm unlikely to notice it in a half-dream state... so I'll lie in bed half-awake and half into some kind of mild nightmare where everything keeps going wrong and I feel stressed. Eventually, 30-60 minutes later, I'll actually realise what's going on, and go and open the window, take some deep breaths, go to the loo, have some water, etc... then once it's calmed away, I can go back to sleep. I would not call this an "anxiety attack" in the full sense because usually people who suffer anxiety attacks can't get out of them so easily... but it definitely seems to overlap with the general understanding of what an anxiety attack is meant to be like. So I call this a "very mild anxiety attack". I've noticed that when those are happening more regularly (e.g. once or twice a day), if I reduce my caffeine intake to zero, they go away almost entirely within a couple of days. So I'm pretty sure it's caffeine-induced.
raheemm 12y ago
So few people and places can allow for this level of vulnerability and authenticity. This post is going to help a lot of people. I have even more respect for Rand and Moz. We can say Fail Fast, Fail this, fail that ... but this kind of writing is the true embrace of failure, learning, wisdom, humanity.
johnyzee 12y ago
I love it when CEO's own up like this, it's probably one of the most appealing traits in a leader I personally can think of. As long as they don't become too insecure to actually lead, introspection and self-criticism are strengths, not weaknesses. Besides, being aware of these traits and their negative repercussions put you in a pretty good place, the ones who really suffer are the guys who repress and deny the down slopes, always happy and bubbly on the outside but in reality inches from a mental breakdown. The last part about how stress causes physical health problems is very important, and very overlooked. Besides the muscle and nervous tension the OP mentioned, stress seriously reduces immunity which can manifest itself in a myriad of unexpected ways (whichever subsystem fails first), from infections to cysts and all kinds of nastiness.
Alex3917 12y ago
> "the funny thing is, Marijuana doesn’t have any pain-killing properties. It just lessens tension, anxiety, and stress for some people." Marijuana is an analgesic. But in this case the effects are stemming from the fact that's its an anti inflammatory, so that the fluid in your disc is no longer compressing the spinal nerves. And the fact that it reduces anxiety also reduces inflammation even further, since anxiety is probably largely what was causing the inflammation.
andreash 12y ago
One of the most honest blog post I've ever read.
marklittlewood 12y ago
Depression in technology is a very common condition. If you suffer from it, please know you ARE NOT ALONE. This talk is very honest, open and has some really helpful and practical advice. http://businessofsoftware.org/2013/11/developers-entrepreneurs-depression-a-wonderful-talk-at-business-of-software-conference/ http://businessofsoftware.org/2013/11/developers-entrepreneu...
jtbigwoo 12y ago
>> ...“layoffs” is a Pandora’s Box-type word at a startup. Don’t use it unless you’re really being transparent (and not just fearful and overly panicked as I was). I made a similar mistake once as a manager and experienced this kind of thing more than once as an employee. Certain words like "layoffs" or "merger" are so loaded because employees know that you know more than they do. Even if you think you're being totally transparent, employees are correct to assume that you're holding some things back because you are. It's your job to understand the state and direction of the company and give your employees the information they need to do their jobs. Employees, especially the smart ones, are going to try to infer additional information from what you tell them even when you think you've told them everything they need to know. Leaders need to be aware that a certain amount of "Kremlinology" happens in every company. He made things worse by being vague about the company's real situation and contradicting himself a couple sentences later when he said, "...we'll survive (though not with much headroom..." If he's talking about layoffs, who is this "we"? Everybody? Rand and Sarah? If you're going to be transparent, you also need to be specific and direct. A better approach might have been, "Sarah and I modeled out some worst-case scenarios last week and this stretches our break-even point an extra six months, which will constrain our growth."
karmajunkie 12y ago
Man, there are a lot of diagnoses getting thrown around this thread. As a caregiver to someone with a serious illness, as well as someone who periodically suffers from many of the same mental and emotional issues raised here... How about refraining from doing that unless you are A) a mental health or otherwise trained medical professional; and B) someone who has actually seen and assessed the patient. I'm not calling out anyone in particular because let's face it, this is HN and we're probably all know-it-alls at one time or another, but this can have some particularly pronounced thoughts and effects on the posters who are getting the comments. If you are dealing with any of these issues, my heart goes out to you. Please reach out to a counselor, or at the very least a counselor or therapist who specializes in the things you're dealing with. If you need help finding one, my email is in my profile, i'm glad to help.
Siecje 12y ago
alt="launch-is-moved-email"
gadders 12y ago
I admire what Moz has done and it was an interesting read. My comment is more of a meta one about HN. Are we really that interested in these stories of depression? We seem to get at least one a week. I realise it's an issue that may affect people here, but I'm not sure if we need the volume we are seeing now.
- AznHisoka 12y ago
  I sure as heck want to see more of these as opposed to "We got acquired and will be living the good life!" or "Heck yeah, we growth hacked to 10,000,000 customers using a vague strategy you probably can't apply to your startup"
  - gadders 12y ago
    Really? Maybe I'm more Pollyanna-ish than most, but I'd much rather read stories of success.
- lnanek2 12y ago
  Well, the stories are submitted by users and voted up by users. Logically, if you think about it, depressed people probably spend more time on social news sites than people who are not, since people who are not are more likely to spend more time working. So depression stories probably have an audience more engaged with the site. The staff do tend to ban or cripple votes of things like NSA stories and whatnot when they want to interfere, but you are talking to the wrong people for an admin hack.
  - gadders 12y ago
    Yeah, but I do sometimes wonder if it's self-reinforcing. - Story on Topic X gets votes - People look for other stories on X - New story on X gets upvoted because the other one was - More stories on X appear
- DanBC 12y ago
  We see so many because of the prevalence of mental ill health in society. These stories are obviously applicable to start ups - what would you do if a co-founder or key employee asked to reduce hours while they were getting medical treatment for mental ill health? What would you do if they were detained against their will under mental health laws? The other reason they get such prominence is that treatment for mental illness is still variable. Cognitive behaviour therapy and medication (for depression) is about as good as you can get yet it still seems weirdly difficult to get that as a package. Finally: these stories point to gaps in the market that startups could fill. Online delivery of therapy has some evidence base, so if you can deliver it better or cheaper there's money to be made. Or perhaps providing evidencd based information to clinicians ("patient has diagnosis X; what should their care look like?") or hundreds of other ideas.
l33tbro 12y ago
As somebody who is not depressed, it is always confronting to see just how hard depressed people are on themselves.
- dfc 12y ago
  Is confronting the word you meant to use? It does not make much sense in this context. But the alternative explanation is that an attempt at "comforting" was auto-corrected to confronting. But being "comforted" by another person's sadness makes it appear that you are a "less than virtuous and decent" person and that does not seem like something you would want to advertise.
  - curtis 12y ago
    Maybe l33tbro meant "disconcerting"?
    - IbJacked 12y ago
      Perhaps "confounding". That sounds right to me.
  - tomsthumb 12y ago
    His writing style suggests either he's dyslexic or that English isn't his first language.
    - dfc 12y ago
      He seems to reside in .au and has a decent command of English idioms. Quotes like the following lead me to believe he is simply a little "less than classy and virtuous." Dont be a depressed waste of space like I was...Id even get on something like Tinder and start getting pussy again just for your self esteem and self worth.
danielweber 12y ago
Slightly OT, but I read the whole thing thinking Moz was a nickname for Mozilla, or, at the least, that Moz was related to Mozilla. It's still good to get these stories.
- ghostly_s 12y ago
  Yep, I was very confused by this as well. Never heard of this company, but 'moz' is a common nickname for Mozilla, I believe.
  - femto113 12y ago
    It's more than a coincidence. The company's original name, SEOMoz, was inspired by projects like DMOZ [1], an "open" web directory that started under the mozilla.org umbrella. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DMOZ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DMOZ
deleted 12y ago
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thinknothing 12y ago
I started writing poetry when i got depressed - www.thinknothing.co
autism_hurts 12y ago
I cannot stress how much exercising to exhaustion daily (read: Crossfit) and eating healthy (Slow Carb / Paleo) impacted my depression. Please try them before you medicate.
- Smudge 12y ago
  I don't doubt that Crossfit does a lot of good, but after reading this I decided not to try it personally: https://medium.com/@ericrobertson/crossfits-dirty-little-secret-97bcce70356d https://medium.com/@ericrobertson/crossfits-dirty-little-sec... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6424280 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6424280
- wbhart 12y ago
  Aerobic exercise is also great for anxiety disorders, but it is important to note that exercise to exhaustion can severely complicate anxiety, as opposed to depression. The reason is that it stresses the nervous system (producing excess cortisol) and ultimately intensifies anxiety attacks. The same goes for anaerobic exercise. It's equivalent to exercising to exhaustion, at even moderate intensity.
dchuk 12y ago
I guess I'll be the only person to comment on the actual Moz business struggles rather than the depression side of this post. Moz raised their money at a really tricky time because it was right before Google essentially bent over the SEO industry. When Rand mentions the Content tool that hasn't even started being developed, that was something that was supposed to take your Google Analytics keyword referrer data and match it to your content and your rankings and your links and your competitors and basically help you spot keywords and content you can easily rank better for. The timeline seems to be matching up where they had this plan for this tool before any of the Google SSL stuff started, so as they started working on the design and UX of it, Google started rolling out the SSL stuff and it basically ruined their idea. Moz ended up adding tools to try and guess what keywords made up your "(not provided)" data but that's a far cry from what they were originally planning. I'm basing this entirely on being heavily involved in the SEO industry around the times mentioned in Rand's article and having even run a successful SEO SaaS product (which is still going even though I've moved on to other projects). I just remember seeing screenshots of what they wanted to build and thinking "wow, if they can nail this, it will be great". I wanted to build a similar app. But when Google started hiding all organic keyword data in analytics, I distinctly remember saying "Well there goes Moz's whole new product". Google really fucked the SEO world up with their (not provided) move. Think what you will about SEO but it's still a legitimate marketing channel and I really have never been able to understand why Google thinks it's ok to not share your organic keyword data but your paid keyword data is totally fine to share with site owners. But not much anyone can do about that now I suppose.
- graeme 12y ago
  What are the best practices for SEO now that keywords are gone? Apart from the obvious stuff like create good content with proper headings etc.
  - dchuk 12y ago
    Well, good content is always important for a variety of reasons. Links are and will always be a major factor for why a site ranks. Technical SEO is what I recommend to most people...basically doing site audits to make sure you don't have any duplicate content, all your links work, proper content siloing, page speed is good, etc. You can also use tools like SEMRush to still kind of find out where sites are ranking but obviously their data can only be so good as they're just crawling Google SERPs. But it's the best we've got now unfortunately.
karl24 12y ago
Mental illness impacts more people than cancer, diabetes, or heart disease. Unfortunately only 1/3 of people who have the illness get treatment due to cost, access, stigma, etc. We're working on an app that uses technology to help bring clinically proven treatments to market at a price point that dramatically improve access. We are pairing this with product design that's common on the consumer web but uncommon in mental health apps to help with adherence and engagement with treatment. I hope this isn't perceived as attempting to capitalize on a serious thread. We (the founders) have incredibly personal reasons for perusing this problem. Many in this thread are likely ideal early adopters for the product. The general awareness that this discussion is raising is a good opportunity to reach out and ask for help as helping us will ultimately help many others. Two ways to help: (1) 7 question survey, < 1 min to complete: http://bit.ly/1plE2Rg http://bit.ly/1plE2Rg (2) contact us directly via cbtmobileapp@gmail.com if you'd like to provide insight via a more in-depth interview.
bocalogic 12y ago
I respect Rand and give him a lot of credit for vocalizing his challenges. Depression is a challenge and it can be overcome. I am not a doctor, but I can tell you that a lot of my peers are suffering from depression from business, marriage or just in general. One thing I do know is that the world has changed a lot in the past decade. The price of everything just keeps going up and we are constantly bombarded by information. Humans are not built that way. There is no badge of honor for being under stress 24/7. It will catch up to you one way or the other. Humans suffer from the fight or flight responses that we encounter during high stress situations. The challenge is to digest it and make decisions not based on fight or flight emotions. The body produces cortisol when we are under duress and it is horrible for you. It screws up everything with your body and your mind. One way to counteract this is by working out, getting sunlight, eating the right foods and staying off caffeine. Try some black or green tea instead. 30 minutes of working out will combat cortisol production for about six hours. Even going for a walk helps a lot. Most of the worlds brightest minds and most successful people suffer from depression and knowing that your ARE NOT ALONE is a huge step forward. You can beat depression and your life will turn around! Talking about it and seeking help is definitely a step in the right direction. Keep your chins up.
- dceddia 12y ago
  You mentioned staying off caffeine, but recommended teas that both (usually) contain caffeine. Not trying to be a jerk, but genuinely curious - is the caffeine from tea better for the body than the caffeine from coffee? Or did you mean decaffeinated types of tea?
  - bocalogic 12y ago
    Your not being a jerk, I should have been more concise. Decaf but Black Tea, in general is helpful. http://www.ucl.ac.uk/media/library/tea http://www.ucl.ac.uk/media/library/tea
  - wbhart 12y ago
    I also agree with the caffeine thing. The reason I stay off it is not so much the immediate effect of caffeine on anxiety (I find none), but because caffeine increases mania. Ultimately mania (dealing with life frantically) causes the nervous system to respond poorly. And anxiety seems to be above all a disproportionate reaction of the sympathetic nervous system. There is also an effect on sleep regulation and a hard edge to withdrawal that can exacerbate anxiety. Incidentally, chocolate contains a related compound, but not caffeine itself. I've experimented with chocolate over what I would consider to be statistically significant periods of time, and I honestly couldn't detect any effect in moderation. Your mileage may vary.
mikeleeorg 12y ago
This is an incredibly brave, and hopefully cathartic post by someone I greatly admire. I really hope he is able to find the support and peace he needs. As a bit of an aside, I wonder how much of this has led to similar troubles for other founders: When the Foundry investment closed, we redoubled our efforts to build Moz Analytics. We hired more aggressively (and briefly had a $12,000 referral bonus for engineers that ended up bringing in mostly wrong kinds of candidates along with creating some internal culture issues), and spent months planning the fine details of the product. I've heard from friends & colleagues about the massive amount of pressure they've felt after closing an investment round. While fundraising is already an incredibly trying process, the next stage is sometimes even more difficult. In contrast, other friends & colleagues who've opted for the bootstrapped route (either by choice or circumstance) haven't seemed to face a similar massive amount of pressure. Yes, they faced incredible stress too, but not to the level of those that have raised capital. This is merely an anecdotal observation made in my peer group. I don't mean to imply that this is some kind of phenomenon. And clinical depression is something that can cut through any kind of circumstance. I just can't help but notice the stark difference in stress level of founders who are growing organically & carefully vs founders who are in a mad recruiting rush and sometimes hire the wrong kind of people. I wonder how much of a relationship there is between having the right kind of people in your company vs the wrong kind of people, and the stress level of a founder. I would imagine a lot.
gadders 12y ago
One last comment - this post from Rand reminds me of the following from Ben Horowitz: "By far the most difficult skill for me to learn as CEO was the ability to manage my own psychology. Organizational design, process design, metrics, hiring and firing were all relatively straightforward skills to master compared to keeping my mind in check. Over the years, I’ve spoken to hundreds of CEOs all with the same experience. Nonetheless, very few people talk about it and I have never read anything on the topic. It’s like the fight club of management: The first rule of the CEO psychological meltdown is don’t talk about the psychological meltdown." http://www.bhorowitz.com/what_s_the_most_difficult_ceo_skill_managing_your_own_psychology http://www.bhorowitz.com/what_s_the_most_difficult_ceo_skill...
DanBC 12y ago
Here's what the English "National Institute for Health and Care Excellence" say: https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/CG90 https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/CG90
astockwell 12y ago
Speaking purely to the experiences of building a new software product, I've seen this exact story play out countless times. Everyone (except maybe the engineers themselves) seems to think that designing a software product is part of the "planning phase", and thus should happen before any time is "wasted" on development: > "That product planning led to an immense series of wireframes and comps (visual designs of what the product would look like and how it would function) that numbered into the hundreds of screens..." The biggest contributor to this I've seen is the dozens (hundreds? thousands?) of small ways that a design (done in a vacuum, without simultaneous prototyping) will differ from established development patterns, frameworks, and other pre-packaged solutions that engineers use daily to avoid reinventing every wheel. And engineers respond with timelines that expect to be able to leverage those frameworks. Thus the dissonance begins. One example: a design calls for a form to be broken across 4 pages. There may be great aesthetic rationale or even user testing to support this, but that means that in all likelyhood any framework (e.g. Rails/Flask/Play/etc, not to mention native apps) will have to have additional modification to support sessions, changes to validation, changes to the auth domain, persistence changes, etc. And it's not necessary for an MVP. And many times these differences are much more subtle and deeply entrenched, and would require rethinking much of the wireframes/designs to align with development patterns. /rant I'm not sure what the answer is here, except maybe that this is one more point in favor of having a "technical founder" or in general a technical person with decision-making authority, to avoid going down a road without proofing out your ideas or timelines.
austengary 12y ago
Not an overnight fix. But with sustained effort, meditation changed my life. Eventually other things fell in place. Diet, exercise, relationships, mental health. Buddhist teachings really helped too. I started here. http://headspace.com http://headspace.com
jroseattle 12y ago
I read through this and the Can't Sleep/Loop post, which had me wiping my eyes. I feel I'm there, right now. We're in the middle of raising money, while I also keep the engineering ship moving forward with product releases. We're about to run out of initial seed money, as we were supposed to have brought in the balance of the round and been on to Series A at this point. It's challenging, but I feel like I'm handling it. Or so I thought. It turns out, I'm getting little sleep right now -- maybe 4-5 hours a night, on average. I've gained back so much weight and I abhor seeing myself in photos. I watch colleagues take absurd plans to investors and get way overfunded, more than they were ever asking to take on, while our little operation that's actually generating revenue (we will likely be break-even in 6 months) gets passed. I know it's not a rational reaction, but still the mental headwinds it creates really sap my soul. It sucks when you're a (very) logical being, and something in your head no longer fits into place. I'm short with my kids at home, and I literally dread downtime. I find that cocktails go down easy, really easy. It's a loop, alright.
akrymski 12y ago
I've been through this at every startup I founded, but managed to pull through in the end - and I'm still hoping this startup won't be any different. I struggle to imagine if any CEO has not had a tough time like this and felt utterly depressed at least once when things weren't working out. Rather than focus on the depression aspect however, why not discuss what COULD have been done better, and what Rand and other CEOs can learn from this - because ultimately there's an important lesson there besides "depression sucks": - Don't bet your whole business on one product. Products come and go, businesses pivot. Remember how Steve Jobs launched the Mac? He created a separate, small division for the Macintosh to directly compete with the rest of the company (working on Lisa - which wasn't going well actaully). That's genius. He knew Mac is a risky project that could well take much longer than anticipated. He didn't bet the whole house. - Start as small as possible. Moz Analytics was meant to be this giant swiss army knife right? Wrong. MVP lessons still apply. Couldn't you have launched the new brand with a tiny set of core features? Broke it into a modular setup where consumers could pay for features/modules in the future as you develop them? - Iterate. Real artists ship, remember? Agile software development and all that? Doesn't sound like you had clearly defined iterative goals that you were hitting as you went, because then you'd really have an idea for where you are in the software development process. You seemed to have to go on someone's word on this. Instead you should have been producing A product every month with an increasing set of features. That way you could have still launched on time, but with less features. - Review your progress often, and don't loose sight of the grand mission. Being smart doesn't help here - it often makes you stubborn, and I've got the same issue. But sometimes you need to have that thc-truffle, take a step back and think how else you could allocate your resources. Are there some other opportunities that the business can simultaneously pursue with a small set of resources as a backup plan? Are there some major M&A deals that can be done to shuffle things around? Do we need to hire more staff / or let people go who aren't hitting the deadlines? Drastic times call for drastic measures. The biggest issue with depression is that deep inside you still expect things to just get better on their own. And as they don't, you feel worse. Well the bad news is they won't get better on their own. You have to do something about it. - Don't fail to communicate. The value of your business is in its passionate community, not one product. Seems like there are lots of people passionate about SeoMoz. Instead of shutting yourself out due to what appeared to you as a product failure, perhaps you could have engaged the community in the process, help you establish the product roadmap for the features you should be rolling out first, and try to understand why 90k of sign ups failed to try out the product.

313 points by squiggy22 12y ago

We talk a lot about successes. It's also good to talk about failures, both partial and more complete. And redemption. The road to victory is long, and I would put my back against Rand because I know this struggle has made him better.

jarek 12y ago
I saw an idea of writing about rejections and failures in science earlier this year, e.g. http://composition.al/blog/2014/04/29/rejections/ http://composition.al/blog/2014/04/29/rejections/ I think there's still risk of others reading a list like that and thinking "look how much they _do_", but it's definitely an improvement on the usual pattern of sharing only successes and good news.
taybin 12y ago
I think the idea that after a business failure someone needs 'redemption' is harmful. Sometimes businesses fail and the person doesn't try to start another business, and that's okay.

x0x0 12y ago

Wow, props to Rand for sharing this. Rand, if you're reading this, two things occur: 1 - you're far from the first person to go for big-bang software releases (though listening to your cto is probably a good idea) 2 - in _Fooled By Randomness_ by Taleb (I believe, I could be misremembering) he describes the incredible level of stress that monitoring his investments daily created. I seem to recall the author writing that he simply was unable to monitor them every day and instead had to only look at some periodic summaries. Perhaps this may help people who get to mentally exhausted looking at numbers daily? I mean, it's good to notice immediately if they crater, though that can be scripted. Beyond that, there's probably not much value looking at them 7 days a week that you don't get looking at them once every seven days. I use the same technique on the elliptical machine; time crawls if I look at the timer, so it's an exercise of will to go as long as possible before looking. Hope he's in a better place now.

tst 12y ago

I'm also recovering from a depression which lasted for quite a while. It absolutely sucks because you think you're worthless, nobody loves you, you can't get anything right and the best would be if you just wouldn't exist anymore. And on top of that you isolate yourself. I know how hard it was to ask for help therefore I want to show you some things which helped me: - Realize that your depression is lying to you. It doesn't tell the truth. It makes you believe that something is logical even if it isn't. - Read 'Feeling Good' - terrible title, great book. It will probably work better than average on the average HN reader because it takes a 'rational' approach to depression (cognitive-behavioral therapy). It helps you to recognize destructive thought patterns and how to deal with them. - Garbage in, garbage out. What works for computers also works for your body. Yeah, you're a geek but you can eat some vegs instead of the 500th pizza. Also working out (or other sports) are pretty great. - Long term: Therapy which tries to work on the root cause and not just at symptoms. Finally, here's a rather extensive list with lectures, books, exercises, etc. which help dealing with depression [1]. Back when I was fed up with feeling crap I created a spreadsheet with the 8 activities and tracked those every day. Note: Every person seem to react to differently. I read about people who improved a lot by meditating - on the other hand, it didn't work for me. So, try some things out and don't give up. You can beat that liar in your head. [0]: http://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Good-The-Mood-Therapy/dp/0380810336 http://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Good-The-Mood-Therapy/dp/03808... [1]: http://www.reddit.com/r/getting_over_it/comments/1nd14u/the_best_stuff_i_have_gathered_to_help_me/ http://www.reddit.com/r/getting_over_it/comments/1nd14u/the_... PS: If you have any questions feel free to ask - if you want to send me a private one write at <username> @ panictank.net

meh_master 12y ago
I've been depressed for over ten years, I'm currently thirty years old. I left my job in January due to depression, though I didn't tell anyone. I haven't worked a day since then and am just living off savings as they dwindle. I haven't spoken to any of my former co-workers who were my only contacts in the Bay Area since I moved from the East Coast to work at a startup. I've spent all day every day numbing myself with weed, porn, mindless internet browsing, etc. I don't even code, every time I open up Xcode or Android Studio I just end up doing nothing. And I honestly just don't want to do anything. The last time I went out socially was in January of this year and even that was just with my then co-workers. And over the past ten and fifteen years it hasn't been any different. I can count on one hand the number of times I've been out socially over the past ten years that wasn't work related (and while employed the number of times I went out with co-workers also number in the single digits). The isolation is what kills me. I haven't had sex in several years and haven't had any intimate relationships in my entire life (the sex were just one nighters and nothing more, and I've never had a "best friend", not even in high school or middle school). Unlike a lot of people with depression, I don't have friends, family (all on East Coast), or girlfriends (I've never had one). I don't even talk with people online, not through FB, not anonymously on web forums or instant messaging. In the past week the only people I've talked to is the cashier at the local supermarket, and that was just to say I wanted a bag and say "thanks see ya later". In fact this is the first time I've written about depression online, I've only told a few people (my mom and a doctor) that I even have it. I've had a hard time dealing with it. I'm trying to get into meditation and what not. But I mostly fear the effect of this extreme isolation. There's a lot of evidence that it kills your brain (literally). I'm reading a book called "The mindful way through Depression". I bought it over two years ago and only started reading it two months ago. I'm still only halfway through. The worst part of depression is that it saps my energy to do anything, even when I do read the book I'll read several pages and not remember a thing of what I read. Sorry about the wall of text if anyone reads this, but it's 5:46 AM and I'm not doing anything else. I haven't gone to sleep yet...I'm just mindlessly browsing the web (I discovered a new TV show earlier today and am marathoning it right now). Either way I still hold some optimism for the future.

swombat 12y ago

Forgive my ignorance and bluntness, but reading the above, it sounds more like an anxiety disorder than like depression. Both are serious, but I'm not sure if it helps to confuse the two? I've not experienced either seriously, but I know people who have. Depression seems to be more about things not mattering anymore, everything being pointless, the world seeming drab and just not fun anymore, rather than feeling that everything is going to go to shit. Anxiety, though, (and I'm speaking from experience here, having had some light anxiety attacks caused by too much regular caffeine usage) seems to be characterised by a feeling of impending doom, that everything is wrong, it can't be fixed, it's all hopeless, etc. But in my (mild) anxiety attacks, like Rand, I still cared about the outcome. I just felt like there were too many problems to solve, overwhelmed, ready to say "fuck this", give up the entire thing, and start again from scratch with something completely different. PS: Otherwise, props for the very honest and open article. Running a business is a lot of responsibility and very stressful and it can be comforting to know you're not the only who seems surrounded by world-ending scenarios.

rbinv 12y ago
Could you please elaborate on your caffeine-related anxiety attacks?
- flavor8 12y ago
  I can speak from my experience. I was for a long time drinking 2-3 cups of coffee in the morning. During the morning, generally things were good and I could crank out code. However, during early-mid afternoon I'd often get overwhelmed, tired, and unfocused, especially when multitasking, and often would lapse into a browse-reddit/agh-i'm-not-being-productive/browse-more-reddit cycle. Cutting down to one 1 cup in the morning has made a real difference - I no longer get the early afternoon slump, and can stay focused for longer in the afternoon without being overwhelmed by a long task list.
- swombat 12y ago
  Sure. I've found that when I drink coffee regularly over a long period, my intake invariably increases. Eventually, it reaches 2 cups of double-espresso-with-milk or equivalent a day, and goes past that too... after a few weeks or something months of that, I start getting strange episodes at random times that I describe as "light anxiety attacks". The way they feel is that I get an impression that something, SOMETHING is wrong. I'm not sure quite what, but I don't realise that I'm not sure what until I realise I'm having one of these attacks. There's an unpleasant feeling of tension that starts in the chest and radiates out to the rest of the body - all the way to fingers and feet, through shoulders, knees, etc. That's the physiological aspects. Mentally, I feel like everything is going wrong. Nothing looks like it's going to work out. I tend to be more aggressive and curt with people, and extremely negative of course, since nothing seems like a good idea. In one of these episodes, I could easily find myself thinking that this business that I run, that employs 17 people and turns over over a million pounds, is doomed and that I should just leave it and run away from it and do something else. When I think something so ridiculous, usually some part of me wakes up and says "hey, that's not quite right", and then I realise I am having an anxiety attack. If awake, once I realise that's what's going on I can deal with it fairly effectively. Get rid of any physical discomforts (e.g. go pee if I need to pee), have some water, take some deep breaths, and refocus on positive things. It used to take longer, but by now, once I realise it's happening, I can get out of it in a couple of minutes, even while I'm in the middle of conversation with others, so it's not noticeable to others. If I'm asleep, it's more bothersome, because I'm unlikely to notice it in a half-dream state... so I'll lie in bed half-awake and half into some kind of mild nightmare where everything keeps going wrong and I feel stressed. Eventually, 30-60 minutes later, I'll actually realise what's going on, and go and open the window, take some deep breaths, go to the loo, have some water, etc... then once it's calmed away, I can go back to sleep. I would not call this an "anxiety attack" in the full sense because usually people who suffer anxiety attacks can't get out of them so easily... but it definitely seems to overlap with the general understanding of what an anxiety attack is meant to be like. So I call this a "very mild anxiety attack". I've noticed that when those are happening more regularly (e.g. once or twice a day), if I reduce my caffeine intake to zero, they go away almost entirely within a couple of days. So I'm pretty sure it's caffeine-induced.

raheemm 12y ago

So few people and places can allow for this level of vulnerability and authenticity. This post is going to help a lot of people. I have even more respect for Rand and Moz. We can say Fail Fast, Fail this, fail that ... but this kind of writing is the true embrace of failure, learning, wisdom, humanity.

johnyzee 12y ago

I love it when CEO's own up like this, it's probably one of the most appealing traits in a leader I personally can think of. As long as they don't become too insecure to actually lead, introspection and self-criticism are strengths, not weaknesses. Besides, being aware of these traits and their negative repercussions put you in a pretty good place, the ones who really suffer are the guys who repress and deny the down slopes, always happy and bubbly on the outside but in reality inches from a mental breakdown. The last part about how stress causes physical health problems is very important, and very overlooked. Besides the muscle and nervous tension the OP mentioned, stress seriously reduces immunity which can manifest itself in a myriad of unexpected ways (whichever subsystem fails first), from infections to cysts and all kinds of nastiness.

Alex3917 12y ago

> "the funny thing is, Marijuana doesn’t have any pain-killing properties. It just lessens tension, anxiety, and stress for some people." Marijuana is an analgesic. But in this case the effects are stemming from the fact that's its an anti inflammatory, so that the fluid in your disc is no longer compressing the spinal nerves. And the fact that it reduces anxiety also reduces inflammation even further, since anxiety is probably largely what was causing the inflammation.

andreash 12y ago

One of the most honest blog post I've ever read.

marklittlewood 12y ago

Depression in technology is a very common condition. If you suffer from it, please know you ARE NOT ALONE. This talk is very honest, open and has some really helpful and practical advice. http://businessofsoftware.org/2013/11/developers-entrepreneurs-depression-a-wonderful-talk-at-business-of-software-conference/ http://businessofsoftware.org/2013/11/developers-entrepreneu...

jtbigwoo 12y ago

>> ...“layoffs” is a Pandora’s Box-type word at a startup. Don’t use it unless you’re really being transparent (and not just fearful and overly panicked as I was). I made a similar mistake once as a manager and experienced this kind of thing more than once as an employee. Certain words like "layoffs" or "merger" are so loaded because employees know that you know more than they do. Even if you think you're being totally transparent, employees are correct to assume that you're holding some things back because you are. It's your job to understand the state and direction of the company and give your employees the information they need to do their jobs. Employees, especially the smart ones, are going to try to infer additional information from what you tell them even when you think you've told them everything they need to know. Leaders need to be aware that a certain amount of "Kremlinology" happens in every company. He made things worse by being vague about the company's real situation and contradicting himself a couple sentences later when he said, "...we'll survive (though not with much headroom..." If he's talking about layoffs, who is this "we"? Everybody? Rand and Sarah? If you're going to be transparent, you also need to be specific and direct. A better approach might have been, "Sarah and I modeled out some worst-case scenarios last week and this stretches our break-even point an extra six months, which will constrain our growth."

karmajunkie 12y ago

Man, there are a lot of diagnoses getting thrown around this thread. As a caregiver to someone with a serious illness, as well as someone who periodically suffers from many of the same mental and emotional issues raised here... How about refraining from doing that unless you are A) a mental health or otherwise trained medical professional; and B) someone who has actually seen and assessed the patient. I'm not calling out anyone in particular because let's face it, this is HN and we're probably all know-it-alls at one time or another, but this can have some particularly pronounced thoughts and effects on the posters who are getting the comments. If you are dealing with any of these issues, my heart goes out to you. Please reach out to a counselor, or at the very least a counselor or therapist who specializes in the things you're dealing with. If you need help finding one, my email is in my profile, i'm glad to help.

Siecje 12y ago

alt="launch-is-moved-email"

gadders 12y ago

I admire what Moz has done and it was an interesting read. My comment is more of a meta one about HN. Are we really that interested in these stories of depression? We seem to get at least one a week. I realise it's an issue that may affect people here, but I'm not sure if we need the volume we are seeing now.

AznHisoka 12y ago
I sure as heck want to see more of these as opposed to "We got acquired and will be living the good life!" or "Heck yeah, we growth hacked to 10,000,000 customers using a vague strategy you probably can't apply to your startup"
- gadders 12y ago
  Really? Maybe I'm more Pollyanna-ish than most, but I'd much rather read stories of success.
lnanek2 12y ago
Well, the stories are submitted by users and voted up by users. Logically, if you think about it, depressed people probably spend more time on social news sites than people who are not, since people who are not are more likely to spend more time working. So depression stories probably have an audience more engaged with the site. The staff do tend to ban or cripple votes of things like NSA stories and whatnot when they want to interfere, but you are talking to the wrong people for an admin hack.
- gadders 12y ago
  Yeah, but I do sometimes wonder if it's self-reinforcing. - Story on Topic X gets votes - People look for other stories on X - New story on X gets upvoted because the other one was - More stories on X appear
DanBC 12y ago
We see so many because of the prevalence of mental ill health in society. These stories are obviously applicable to start ups - what would you do if a co-founder or key employee asked to reduce hours while they were getting medical treatment for mental ill health? What would you do if they were detained against their will under mental health laws? The other reason they get such prominence is that treatment for mental illness is still variable. Cognitive behaviour therapy and medication (for depression) is about as good as you can get yet it still seems weirdly difficult to get that as a package. Finally: these stories point to gaps in the market that startups could fill. Online delivery of therapy has some evidence base, so if you can deliver it better or cheaper there's money to be made. Or perhaps providing evidencd based information to clinicians ("patient has diagnosis X; what should their care look like?") or hundreds of other ideas.

l33tbro 12y ago

As somebody who is not depressed, it is always confronting to see just how hard depressed people are on themselves.

dfc 12y ago
Is confronting the word you meant to use? It does not make much sense in this context. But the alternative explanation is that an attempt at "comforting" was auto-corrected to confronting. But being "comforted" by another person's sadness makes it appear that you are a "less than virtuous and decent" person and that does not seem like something you would want to advertise.
- curtis 12y ago
  Maybe l33tbro meant "disconcerting"?
  - IbJacked 12y ago
    Perhaps "confounding". That sounds right to me.
- tomsthumb 12y ago
  His writing style suggests either he's dyslexic or that English isn't his first language.
  - dfc 12y ago
    He seems to reside in .au and has a decent command of English idioms. Quotes like the following lead me to believe he is simply a little "less than classy and virtuous." Dont be a depressed waste of space like I was...Id even get on something like Tinder and start getting pussy again just for your self esteem and self worth.

danielweber 12y ago

Slightly OT, but I read the whole thing thinking Moz was a nickname for Mozilla, or, at the least, that Moz was related to Mozilla. It's still good to get these stories.

ghostly_s 12y ago
Yep, I was very confused by this as well. Never heard of this company, but 'moz' is a common nickname for Mozilla, I believe.
- femto113 12y ago
  It's more than a coincidence. The company's original name, SEOMoz, was inspired by projects like DMOZ [1], an "open" web directory that started under the mozilla.org umbrella. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DMOZ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DMOZ

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

thinknothing 12y ago

I started writing poetry when i got depressed - www.thinknothing.co

autism_hurts 12y ago

I cannot stress how much exercising to exhaustion daily (read: Crossfit) and eating healthy (Slow Carb / Paleo) impacted my depression. Please try them before you medicate.

Smudge 12y ago
I don't doubt that Crossfit does a lot of good, but after reading this I decided not to try it personally: https://medium.com/@ericrobertson/crossfits-dirty-little-secret-97bcce70356d https://medium.com/@ericrobertson/crossfits-dirty-little-sec... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6424280 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6424280
wbhart 12y ago
Aerobic exercise is also great for anxiety disorders, but it is important to note that exercise to exhaustion can severely complicate anxiety, as opposed to depression. The reason is that it stresses the nervous system (producing excess cortisol) and ultimately intensifies anxiety attacks. The same goes for anaerobic exercise. It's equivalent to exercising to exhaustion, at even moderate intensity.

dchuk 12y ago

I guess I'll be the only person to comment on the actual Moz business struggles rather than the depression side of this post. Moz raised their money at a really tricky time because it was right before Google essentially bent over the SEO industry. When Rand mentions the Content tool that hasn't even started being developed, that was something that was supposed to take your Google Analytics keyword referrer data and match it to your content and your rankings and your links and your competitors and basically help you spot keywords and content you can easily rank better for. The timeline seems to be matching up where they had this plan for this tool before any of the Google SSL stuff started, so as they started working on the design and UX of it, Google started rolling out the SSL stuff and it basically ruined their idea. Moz ended up adding tools to try and guess what keywords made up your "(not provided)" data but that's a far cry from what they were originally planning. I'm basing this entirely on being heavily involved in the SEO industry around the times mentioned in Rand's article and having even run a successful SEO SaaS product (which is still going even though I've moved on to other projects). I just remember seeing screenshots of what they wanted to build and thinking "wow, if they can nail this, it will be great". I wanted to build a similar app. But when Google started hiding all organic keyword data in analytics, I distinctly remember saying "Well there goes Moz's whole new product". Google really fucked the SEO world up with their (not provided) move. Think what you will about SEO but it's still a legitimate marketing channel and I really have never been able to understand why Google thinks it's ok to not share your organic keyword data but your paid keyword data is totally fine to share with site owners. But not much anyone can do about that now I suppose.

graeme 12y ago
What are the best practices for SEO now that keywords are gone? Apart from the obvious stuff like create good content with proper headings etc.
- dchuk 12y ago
  Well, good content is always important for a variety of reasons. Links are and will always be a major factor for why a site ranks. Technical SEO is what I recommend to most people...basically doing site audits to make sure you don't have any duplicate content, all your links work, proper content siloing, page speed is good, etc. You can also use tools like SEMRush to still kind of find out where sites are ranking but obviously their data can only be so good as they're just crawling Google SERPs. But it's the best we've got now unfortunately.

karl24 12y ago

Mental illness impacts more people than cancer, diabetes, or heart disease. Unfortunately only 1/3 of people who have the illness get treatment due to cost, access, stigma, etc. We're working on an app that uses technology to help bring clinically proven treatments to market at a price point that dramatically improve access. We are pairing this with product design that's common on the consumer web but uncommon in mental health apps to help with adherence and engagement with treatment. I hope this isn't perceived as attempting to capitalize on a serious thread. We (the founders) have incredibly personal reasons for perusing this problem. Many in this thread are likely ideal early adopters for the product. The general awareness that this discussion is raising is a good opportunity to reach out and ask for help as helping us will ultimately help many others. Two ways to help: (1) 7 question survey, < 1 min to complete: http://bit.ly/1plE2Rg http://bit.ly/1plE2Rg (2) contact us directly via cbtmobileapp@gmail.com if you'd like to provide insight via a more in-depth interview.

bocalogic 12y ago

I respect Rand and give him a lot of credit for vocalizing his challenges. Depression is a challenge and it can be overcome. I am not a doctor, but I can tell you that a lot of my peers are suffering from depression from business, marriage or just in general. One thing I do know is that the world has changed a lot in the past decade. The price of everything just keeps going up and we are constantly bombarded by information. Humans are not built that way. There is no badge of honor for being under stress 24/7. It will catch up to you one way or the other. Humans suffer from the fight or flight responses that we encounter during high stress situations. The challenge is to digest it and make decisions not based on fight or flight emotions. The body produces cortisol when we are under duress and it is horrible for you. It screws up everything with your body and your mind. One way to counteract this is by working out, getting sunlight, eating the right foods and staying off caffeine. Try some black or green tea instead. 30 minutes of working out will combat cortisol production for about six hours. Even going for a walk helps a lot. Most of the worlds brightest minds and most successful people suffer from depression and knowing that your ARE NOT ALONE is a huge step forward. You can beat depression and your life will turn around! Talking about it and seeking help is definitely a step in the right direction. Keep your chins up.

dceddia 12y ago
You mentioned staying off caffeine, but recommended teas that both (usually) contain caffeine. Not trying to be a jerk, but genuinely curious - is the caffeine from tea better for the body than the caffeine from coffee? Or did you mean decaffeinated types of tea?
- bocalogic 12y ago
  Your not being a jerk, I should have been more concise. Decaf but Black Tea, in general is helpful. http://www.ucl.ac.uk/media/library/tea http://www.ucl.ac.uk/media/library/tea
- wbhart 12y ago
  I also agree with the caffeine thing. The reason I stay off it is not so much the immediate effect of caffeine on anxiety (I find none), but because caffeine increases mania. Ultimately mania (dealing with life frantically) causes the nervous system to respond poorly. And anxiety seems to be above all a disproportionate reaction of the sympathetic nervous system. There is also an effect on sleep regulation and a hard edge to withdrawal that can exacerbate anxiety. Incidentally, chocolate contains a related compound, but not caffeine itself. I've experimented with chocolate over what I would consider to be statistically significant periods of time, and I honestly couldn't detect any effect in moderation. Your mileage may vary.

mikeleeorg 12y ago

This is an incredibly brave, and hopefully cathartic post by someone I greatly admire. I really hope he is able to find the support and peace he needs. As a bit of an aside, I wonder how much of this has led to similar troubles for other founders: When the Foundry investment closed, we redoubled our efforts to build Moz Analytics. We hired more aggressively (and briefly had a $12,000 referral bonus for engineers that ended up bringing in mostly wrong kinds of candidates along with creating some internal culture issues), and spent months planning the fine details of the product. I've heard from friends & colleagues about the massive amount of pressure they've felt after closing an investment round. While fundraising is already an incredibly trying process, the next stage is sometimes even more difficult. In contrast, other friends & colleagues who've opted for the bootstrapped route (either by choice or circumstance) haven't seemed to face a similar massive amount of pressure. Yes, they faced incredible stress too, but not to the level of those that have raised capital. This is merely an anecdotal observation made in my peer group. I don't mean to imply that this is some kind of phenomenon. And clinical depression is something that can cut through any kind of circumstance. I just can't help but notice the stark difference in stress level of founders who are growing organically & carefully vs founders who are in a mad recruiting rush and sometimes hire the wrong kind of people. I wonder how much of a relationship there is between having the right kind of people in your company vs the wrong kind of people, and the stress level of a founder. I would imagine a lot.

gadders 12y ago

One last comment - this post from Rand reminds me of the following from Ben Horowitz: "By far the most difficult skill for me to learn as CEO was the ability to manage my own psychology. Organizational design, process design, metrics, hiring and firing were all relatively straightforward skills to master compared to keeping my mind in check. Over the years, I’ve spoken to hundreds of CEOs all with the same experience. Nonetheless, very few people talk about it and I have never read anything on the topic. It’s like the fight club of management: The first rule of the CEO psychological meltdown is don’t talk about the psychological meltdown." http://www.bhorowitz.com/what_s_the_most_difficult_ceo_skill_managing_your_own_psychology http://www.bhorowitz.com/what_s_the_most_difficult_ceo_skill...

DanBC 12y ago

Here's what the English "National Institute for Health and Care Excellence" say: https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/CG90 https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/CG90

astockwell 12y ago

Speaking purely to the experiences of building a new software product, I've seen this exact story play out countless times. Everyone (except maybe the engineers themselves) seems to think that designing a software product is part of the "planning phase", and thus should happen before any time is "wasted" on development: > "That product planning led to an immense series of wireframes and comps (visual designs of what the product would look like and how it would function) that numbered into the hundreds of screens..." The biggest contributor to this I've seen is the dozens (hundreds? thousands?) of small ways that a design (done in a vacuum, without simultaneous prototyping) will differ from established development patterns, frameworks, and other pre-packaged solutions that engineers use daily to avoid reinventing every wheel. And engineers respond with timelines that expect to be able to leverage those frameworks. Thus the dissonance begins. One example: a design calls for a form to be broken across 4 pages. There may be great aesthetic rationale or even user testing to support this, but that means that in all likelyhood any framework (e.g. Rails/Flask/Play/etc, not to mention native apps) will have to have additional modification to support sessions, changes to validation, changes to the auth domain, persistence changes, etc. And it's not necessary for an MVP. And many times these differences are much more subtle and deeply entrenched, and would require rethinking much of the wireframes/designs to align with development patterns. /rant I'm not sure what the answer is here, except maybe that this is one more point in favor of having a "technical founder" or in general a technical person with decision-making authority, to avoid going down a road without proofing out your ideas or timelines.

austengary 12y ago

Not an overnight fix. But with sustained effort, meditation changed my life. Eventually other things fell in place. Diet, exercise, relationships, mental health. Buddhist teachings really helped too. I started here. http://headspace.com http://headspace.com

jroseattle 12y ago

I read through this and the Can't Sleep/Loop post, which had me wiping my eyes. I feel I'm there, right now. We're in the middle of raising money, while I also keep the engineering ship moving forward with product releases. We're about to run out of initial seed money, as we were supposed to have brought in the balance of the round and been on to Series A at this point. It's challenging, but I feel like I'm handling it. Or so I thought. It turns out, I'm getting little sleep right now -- maybe 4-5 hours a night, on average. I've gained back so much weight and I abhor seeing myself in photos. I watch colleagues take absurd plans to investors and get way overfunded, more than they were ever asking to take on, while our little operation that's actually generating revenue (we will likely be break-even in 6 months) gets passed. I know it's not a rational reaction, but still the mental headwinds it creates really sap my soul. It sucks when you're a (very) logical being, and something in your head no longer fits into place. I'm short with my kids at home, and I literally dread downtime. I find that cocktails go down easy, really easy. It's a loop, alright.

akrymski 12y ago

I've been through this at every startup I founded, but managed to pull through in the end - and I'm still hoping this startup won't be any different. I struggle to imagine if any CEO has not had a tough time like this and felt utterly depressed at least once when things weren't working out. Rather than focus on the depression aspect however, why not discuss what COULD have been done better, and what Rand and other CEOs can learn from this - because ultimately there's an important lesson there besides "depression sucks": - Don't bet your whole business on one product. Products come and go, businesses pivot. Remember how Steve Jobs launched the Mac? He created a separate, small division for the Macintosh to directly compete with the rest of the company (working on Lisa - which wasn't going well actaully). That's genius. He knew Mac is a risky project that could well take much longer than anticipated. He didn't bet the whole house. - Start as small as possible. Moz Analytics was meant to be this giant swiss army knife right? Wrong. MVP lessons still apply. Couldn't you have launched the new brand with a tiny set of core features? Broke it into a modular setup where consumers could pay for features/modules in the future as you develop them? - Iterate. Real artists ship, remember? Agile software development and all that? Doesn't sound like you had clearly defined iterative goals that you were hitting as you went, because then you'd really have an idea for where you are in the software development process. You seemed to have to go on someone's word on this. Instead you should have been producing A product every month with an increasing set of features. That way you could have still launched on time, but with less features. - Review your progress often, and don't loose sight of the grand mission. Being smart doesn't help here - it often makes you stubborn, and I've got the same issue. But sometimes you need to have that thc-truffle, take a step back and think how else you could allocate your resources. Are there some other opportunities that the business can simultaneously pursue with a small set of resources as a backup plan? Are there some major M&A deals that can be done to shuffle things around? Do we need to hire more staff / or let people go who aren't hitting the deadlines? Drastic times call for drastic measures. The biggest issue with depression is that deep inside you still expect things to just get better on their own. And as they don't, you feel worse. Well the bad news is they won't get better on their own. You have to do something about it. - Don't fail to communicate. The value of your business is in its passionate community, not one product. Seems like there are lots of people passionate about SeoMoz. Instead of shutting yourself out due to what appeared to you as a product failure, perhaps you could have engaged the community in the process, help you establish the product roadmap for the features you should be rolling out first, and try to understand why 90k of sign ups failed to try out the product.