Monthly Archives: December 2014

Finally Emerging From A Founder Depression

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At times we can be our own worst enemy.  The challenge is to minimize those times.

We often hear choosing to become an entrepreneur – and the life that accompanies it – is not for the faint of heart.  This is absolutely true.  But for the longest time I didn’t really understand what it meant.  Or moreover, I didn’t fully respect the ramifications of the simple choice of taking my entrepreneurial leap.

Yet now being on the other side of this experience, I understand on a deeper level what entrepreneurship all about, and how to best navigate through it the rest of my life.  As I describe some of my thoughts and observations, I hope they might resonate with you as well and help you through whatever your situation you might be in currently.

Entrepreneurs, by default, are high performers.  And high performers, by default, are hard on themselves when times get tough.  Combine those two and you could get a deadly combination.

Entrepreneurs hold themselves to higher standards than others and often are disappointed when things don’t necessarily end up as great as they had thought when they initially set out.  But you know what?   Entrepreneurship never ends up like you initially thought.  It’s messier than anyone ever imagines and more extreme than anyone ever describes.

After I experienced a failed startup I dropped into what I now can identify as a depression.  I was not – and am not – depressed as in the clinical sense, but it was more like what you would think when people refer to the last economic depression we recently survived.  It was temporary and externally triggered.  Things weren’t right and I was responding to them certainly in a negative and self deprecating way.

It was painful.  It felt troubling.  It sucked because I wasn’t supposed to be there.  Or so I thought.

What I discovered was I denied myself some truths I should have admitted at the time.  I wasn’t admitting things like: 1) I really didn’t know what I was doing, and neither does anyone else.  2) The business was not working the way we had positioned it.  2) Startups actually do fail!  3) It’s okay to walk away rather than being so committed to a project you drive yourself into the ground.  4) Your personal value is more than just your company’s success.

I did not admit those things and the result was just that – nose dive right into the ground.  Being a friend or family member you probably wouldn’t have known it by being around me.  I am a damn good actor.  I do a great job of burying the issue and grabbing another beer to selflessly talk about your challenges and issues.

Yet deep down inside was some of the worst self talk anyone could imagine.  I was not my biggest cheerleader, supporter, believer and best friend.  If you are wondering, negative self talk is not the path to success.

It took a few years to pull myself out of it.  It took me accepting the fact that although I knew I could be a great founder at some point in my life, now was not the time.  It took me putting my ego aside and accepting positions with other startups and companies where I could add value and learn more about building companies.

It seems elementary now, but letting go of the founder dream and using my skills in an another company was the farthest thing from my mind at the time.  It took me admitting I did not know it all and I need to place myself somewhere to both earn a living and learn more about the world of technology and growing a business around it.

This type of wisdom and perspective is almost impossible when you think you are worthless.  And that is exactly what people think when their startup fails.  They think since they could not make their own company work – one where they pretty much put every ounce of effort they possibly could into making it work – what’s their value anywhere else?  This and other similar thinking is obviously incorrect and ill applied.  Yet, I am telling you this is exactly what I and other founders find themselves thinking.

I have since pulled myself back together, landed a great position with another company here in Seattle and on the path to learning and earning!

The resulting mental and emotional clarity is refreshing. It has allowed me to stabilize my life and opened up space for other projects like Founders RAW, Coinme, and getting back to writing.  It has allowed me to establish myself as a mentor and advisor to other entrepreneurs, here and elsewhere in the world. It has allowed me to embrace and fully enjoy a meaningful relationship for the first time in a long time.

The lesson here is not that you can do things to avoid the founder depression.  More than likely it’s inevitable for you, me and every other entrepreneur.  The lesson is in identifying the oncoming founder depression, quickly observing its symptoms, and then finding mitigation strategies you can deploy to keep you afloat – and happy.

Entrepreneurship is not for the faint of heart.  But it is for the wise and honest.

When A Founder Crosses The Line Towards Godlike Hubris

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I recently noticed a frightening trend with certain founders in the tech industry.

–> Have a great idea.  Get a few key people to join you and build it.  Launch the product and raise money from investors.  Experience massive success.   Raise more money.  Gain hundreds of millions of users. Raise billions of dollars and fight off regulators.  Have unfiltered access to billions of people’s data.  Exploit it.  Believe you are the second coming of a God.  Act like an uncaring, immoral capitalist.  Care only about your wealth and not what you are doing to everyday citizens.  And so on…

With the recent Uber misteps and observing the resulting outrage which ensued, it has come to my attention that we, as an industry, need to take a long look in the mirror.  Founders need to take full consideration in how they are running their company, the culture they are creating, the data they are generating, and the ultimate consequences of their actions.

I hope Uber realizes they are doing to their users exactly what they were furious (I assume) about the government doing to them as citizens when the Snowden files were revealed last year.

We all need to understand we are standing at an unprecedented time in the history of business and technology.  Everyday Joes now have the opportunity to create an app or platform that one day might just become indispensable to mankind.  With its use, Joe will collect billions upon billions of data points on everyday citizens – like where they are currently, where they are going, who they talk to, what they typed, to whom, what they viewed on their phones, whom they connected with socially, etc..  With all this happening, Joe will find himself directly in the middle of our society, holding a treasure trove of personal data and a devil on his shoulder just waiting for the right time to temp him into exploiting it.

I mean, it’s like big brother!

But surprisingly it ain’t the government doing these things.  Imagine what Facebook knows about you.  Couple that with your Uber or Lyft usage data.  Toss in your twitter clicks, Instagram photos, Gmail history and Google Chrome browser history.

We are doing this to ourselves.  We are the ones creating this new world of massive data collection which is resulting in unprecedented spying, snooping, breaches of security, cloud hacks and the like.

This is your fault.  And mine.  It’s all of our faults.  All in the name of making more money.

I am not here to end the data analysis, in fact I believe in it and when done correctly it makes for a better end user experience.  I also know data collection is only going to get more prevalent with the expansion of categories like the Internet of Things and connected homes.

Yet, I am urging us to start thinking about things using a different filter, or scope of perspective.  Start asking yourself these questions:

Recognizing all possible data about myself and every other person is now being collected, how to I structure my platform to preserve mankind and the humanity inherent within our society?

How do balance personalization of my technology with personal security of my users?

How do I proceed when I know I CAN do something but unsure if I SHOULD do something?

Where’s my “do not cross line?”

How can we best usher in a new era of technology applications where security is inherent within the structure of the product, not an afterthought when plugging holes after launch?

How do I shift my perspective from making the most money possible with my application towards making the world a better, more secure and protected society?

Please start thinking about these questions and more…  It’s time we call a spade a spade – WE are the ones creating the exact surveillance society we were deathly afraid of growing up.  We just thought it would be the Big Bad Government or another foreign country, not ourselves.

Please understand hubris will sink anyone who thinks they are immune to it.  You – as a founder and someone desperately wanting to change the world – can now no doubt do just that.  You and your technology can alter the history of humans here on earth.  Just make sure you know what change you are putting in place.