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Post YC Depression

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Re: Post YC Depression

#21

Post by speedplane »

forgingahead wrote: post #16

Glad the writer has written openly about this, and I hope he continues to get better and find more balance in his life. Businesses are tough endeavours, and those who truly do it honestly and with love for their biz and their customers can seriously run the risk of draining themselves if they're not careful. It's also tough because there is an entire industry of "hustle porn" out there, and the world is moving so fas…

Founder burnout is simply a result of the stress of the increased responsibility you have. Your employees expect a pay-check every two weeks, and even if you pay yourself nothing, you have to make that happen. Lack of income stability destabilizes a lot. You don't have a boss, regardless of who is on your board of advisers or claims to be your mentor, all they can offer is words, the founder has the responsibility and has to make the decisions. You may have friends doing their own startup, and despite your best efforts to resist, you compare your own success to them. You make excuses for those that surpass you, feel schadenfreude when others fail, and then feel guilty for even having such thoughts.

In practice, founder burnout is pretty rare. The stresses of running a business are real and can affect your life and decision making process, but the business challenges themselves are often even more difficult. Also, founders don't just start a company as any employee would start a job, they need to start with a huge reserve of enthusiasm or motivation. Emotionally, they start from a higher place, are subjected to higher than normal stresses, but their stress tolerance itself is not often the limiting factor.

Re: Post YC Depression

#22

Post by keiferski »

speedplane wrote: post #9

This article should be another datapoint in every entrepreneur's handbook that simply going through the YC and Silicon Valley VC community does not ensure good outcomes. Owning 100% of a company making $1M/year is far more rewarding and valuable than owning 1% of a company making $100M/year. Consider YC as a last resort if you have no other options.

If you only own 1% of your company after raising funds, you've made some serious mistakes along the way. Even Bezos, prior to his divorce, still owned 16% of Amazon, and that's after they raised money and went public - he owned 48% prior to the IPO.

Re: Post YC Depression

#23

Post by speedplane »

blueboo wrote: post #11

I admire this post as an exception to the usual cheerful failure porn. Failing sucks. But-I-learned-something is the very least you can achieve without being in a coma. The time is lost. Your waning bank account measures your (and maybe your families) prospects in an undeniably meaningful way. The silver lining is...there isn’t one. The loss of time, energy, and money is something to grieve for. Every day is a remind…

> When jumping into a startup, the question “why not” has very real and consequential answers. Beware and take this shit seriously.

The article listed a host of real and bad experiences, but it never said that if they could go back and do it again, they wouldn't.

Re: Post YC Depression

#24

Post by ignoramous »

speedplane wrote: post #9

This article should be another datapoint in every entrepreneur's handbook that simply going through the YC and Silicon Valley VC community does not ensure good outcomes. Owning 100% of a company making $1M/year is far more rewarding and valuable than owning 1% of a company making $100M/year. Consider YC as a last resort if you have no other options.

> Consider YC as a last resort if you have no other options.

I think you mean, consider "accelerators" / outside-investment from Angels and VCs as a last resort? YC can't be last resort, because it would be foolish to think you'd get in, given the quality of startups and founders that apply-- Might as well pack up bags and brush up on leet-code, instead, as that's a last-resort more likely to work.

Re: Post YC Depression

#25

Post by ansq »

hawkice wrote: post #19
speedplane wrote: post #9

This article should be another datapoint in every entrepreneur's handbook that simply going through the YC and Silicon Valley VC community does not ensure good outcomes. Owning 100% of a company making $1M/year is far more rewarding and valuable than owning 1% of a company making $100M/year. Consider YC as a last resort if you have no other options.

For most people, owning 100% of a company making $1M/year would be preferable to owning 10% of a company making $1B. It's not just that money has decreasing marginal value. It's about what life you want to live. The ten percent life is... just not for everyone, and maybe not for anyone, which is why it needs to be incentivized so much to ever happen.

Owning 10% doesn't mean you're a peon. At 10% of a 1B company you probably have a good amount of autonomy.

Some people take pride in creating products that are widely used + lots of jobs.

Re: Post YC Depression

#26

Post by mettamage »

Disclaimer: I know a bit about these things from either personal/friend/family experiences or through my psychology degree. I'm not a clinical psychologist though, I simply graduated a psych program one day.

Before I go into the author's claims let's explain in a visceral way how stress becomes unhealthy. This is how I experience it: stress is normally fine, just like exercising is fine. Stress is just like lifting heavy things. If you do it every minute of the day, at one point your body will collapse and need to heal. So you don't do that.

Well, in some situations the stress can't go away. That is when your mental health starts taking a toll. Imagine if you have to lift 50kg all the time and it can't go away, want to stop? No, you have to lift right now. Broken arm? Lift! You have to! It won't go away. You can imagine that your body would collapse and burn out.

Don't get stress that you can't summon away, because if that stress becomes too much, then you have hitched a ride to the gloomy village of depression. Sometimes you don't have (or don't feel like you have) a choice though, that's the bitter sweetness called life, unfortunately.

---

With that said, I think Techcrunch and this author are doing a disservice to the psychological conditions that were listed. Let me show what I mean:

> 2X more likely to suffer from depression

I get that.

> 6X more likely to suffer from ADHD

That seems like self selection people with ADHD seem to me to be better suited for a generalist role. It doesn't seem like you get ADHD because you choose to be a founder.

> 3X more likely to suffer from substance abuse

Stress is a nasty thing.

> 10X more likely to suffer from bi-polar disorder

Seems like self selection the mania states of people with bi-polar can be super productive (or destructive, depending on the person). But again, it doesn't seem like you get bipolar because you choose to be a founder.

> 2X more likely to have psychiatric hospitalization

Did I say that stress is a really nasty thing?

> 2X more likely to have suicidal thoughts

Chronic not-going away stress can do this to a person.

---

Leave bipolar and ADHD out of it. Also, psychiatric hospitalization is better than whatever I whenever I'm in San Francisco. Getting help (or being forced to get help) should not be on this list.

Re: Post YC Depression

#27

Post by fab1an »

One of the advantages of running your own business is that you set the tempo and values of it yourself. You. No one else. If you end up with something that isn't working out for you, you're doing it wrong.

At my previous company, one of our (somewhat implicit) values was "suffering is not a KPI".

And even though there are times when things are rougher, these should be exceptions, not the rule.

At the same time, working 100 hours per week is the most bullshit business myth of all.

This is usually touted by the type of person who spends a lot of time in meetings or 'catching up on important news', and within industries where people are flat out lying to each other about how much they actually work (management consultants come to mind, and certainly some investor types.)

When you meet these people IRL you realize many of their 100 hours are spend sipping coffee in another part of town while having casual meetings, prior to running some personal errand. While some of this may qualify as 'work', it is not the type of 'work-work' that a naive coder/entrepreneur is pursuing en route to their burn out!

Re: Post YC Depression

#28

Post by speedplane »

keiferski wrote: post #22
speedplane wrote: post #9

This article should be another datapoint in every entrepreneur's handbook that simply going through the YC and Silicon Valley VC community does not ensure good outcomes. Owning 100% of a company making $1M/year is far more rewarding and valuable than owning 1% of a company making $100M/year. Consider YC as a last resort if you have no other options.

If you only own 1% of your company after raising funds, you've made some serious mistakes along the way. Even Bezos, prior to his divorce, still owned 16% of Amazon, and that's after they raised money and went public - he owned 48% prior to the IPO.

> If you only own 1% of your company after raising funds, you've made some serious mistakes along the way.

This was a simple example to illustrate a point. A more realistic example would be: owning 100% of a company making $1M/year is better than owning 40% of a company making $100M/year where investors put in $500M with a 4X liquidation preference. This case is even clearer here, but not quite as easy to parse.

Modern VCs allow founders to retain a large "percentage" of their company in stock or other ownership terms, but they use liquidation preferences and other mechanisms to effectively increase their financial leverage.

Re: Post YC Depression

#29

Post by wastedhours »

zenincognito wrote: post #4

Gary vee talks like he does something amazing while what he does can really be done by a good cold caller. I don't see what he has done to earn the recognition he has. I agree with the author. Selling a $90 poster that basically is the worst advice you can give to an entrepreneur.

Can't wait for more people to stop listening to Gary Vee. He's been pushing unhealthy BS for too long, and no amount of "do what works for you" caveating stops people thinking that's the only way to succeed.

Something of an irony that one of the best places to hear about anti-workaholism is on YC's forum.

Re: Post YC Depression

#30

Post by speedplane »

hawkice wrote: post #19
speedplane wrote: post #9

This article should be another datapoint in every entrepreneur's handbook that simply going through the YC and Silicon Valley VC community does not ensure good outcomes. Owning 100% of a company making $1M/year is far more rewarding and valuable than owning 1% of a company making $100M/year. Consider YC as a last resort if you have no other options.

For most people, owning 100% of a company making $1M/year would be preferable to owning 10% of a company making $1B. It's not just that money has decreasing marginal value. It's about what life you want to live. The ten percent life is... just not for everyone, and maybe not for anyone, which is why it needs to be incentivized so much to ever happen.

> For most people, owning 100% of a company making $1M/year would be preferable to owning 10% of a company making $1B. It's not just that money has decreasing marginal value. It's about what life you want to live.

Being in control of your life, or of anything, is a huge benefit and comes with a big premium. When one company acquires a public company, they usually pay more than the public stock price. If you don't drive to work, owning a car is very likely more expensive than renting, but many buy because control over when and how to drive is gained is worth the cost.

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