Without prejudice against her conclusions, a few things came to mind while reading this. I couldn't help but think that it's easy for someone like Caterina Fak

Without prejudice against her conclusions, a few things came to mind while reading this. I couldn't help but think that it's easy for someone like Caterina Fake to keep cool and chill out: she's already made her millions from Flickr and she's got no one to impress. Her investors (if any) and colleagues already believe in her, she believes in herself, and quite frankly she doesn't have much to lose. Also, I did not find the description of Watson and Crick to be particularly surprising, nor the implicit comparison to her current founding team particularly valid. Anyone who's done serious research (or undertaken a major creative endeavor) knows that you need to give yourself time to breathe, be creative, and think about the big picture. Ironically, as I write this, I'm beginning to think the comparison may be more valid than I first gave it credit for ... Finally, I was reminded of a Steve Blank quote something along the lines of "In uncertain times, people tend to look down at their business cards and do whatever it says on the title line." I think as founders, when all else fails we fall back on doing that thing. Those of us who are technical founders will write code and create features; those of us who are more business-oriented will build new strategies and obsess over details of the business; those of us who have to do both will, well, do both — and not particularly well.