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Founder Depression

blog.samaltman.com

81–90 of 210 posts

Re: Founder Depression

#81
post #13

Great post. I wonder whether organizations like YC might consider offering compensation for seeing a therapist during and after their batch, and even perhaps going as far as recommending a particular local therapist. I've experienced depression while running a startup, and seeing a therapist was immensely helpful. A therapist who regularly sees founders as clients would have a stronger-than-usual feedback loop on wha…

> I wonder whether organizations like YC might consider offering compensation for seeing a therapist.

YC is not an employer of founders. It's just an investor. They don't give founders money on a regular basis. They do help you find other investors but other than that just give you the usual dose of probably non-applicable advice that might not help you much. The main benefit of getting into YC is saying that you got into YC and a Techcrunch article.

Re: Founder Depression

#82

You can't afford to follow this advice. Saying you're crushing it is part of your 24/7 job description. There is a story of the founder who had just put a round together with a VC. Then, privately, the founder confided to a mutual friend, over dinner, about some of the difficulties. Result? The friend told the VC, the VC pulled out, and cited this conversation, saying that it was because his mutual friend said the co…

Doesn't sound like much of a "friend". Honestly if you're facing depression you can't afford not to talk. But ideally you would find someone trustworthy to talk to.

well okay but Sam's blog post makes it seem like it's almost a coincidence that everyone happens to talk all the time about crushing it. It's not. It's part of the job description. You have to learn to do it.

Re: Founder Depression

#83
post #20

Can someone provide insight on life after a failed startup, in terms of career prospects? Often depression can make you feel as if you're failing on all fronts, that nothing will get better in the foreseeable future. Most of the time that really isn't true. You're often stuck in a temporary rut that your mind drastically exaggerates. But for a founder who's going through a dark time and whose startup ultimately fails…

Just from empirical observation, healthy people will naturally adjust to new circumstances, even terrible ones. It's the time spent transitioning between states that makes us depressed. Otherwise, we'd never be able to overcome the loss of a loved one, a bad diagnosis, bankruptcy, etc. This is why it's important to have someone to talk to so you can get through this period of downtime, and if you notice a friend struggling, go the extra mile to help take her mind off whatever she's going through to avoid something like suicide which, sadly, happened to someone close to me.

On the flip side, this probably explains why the extremely wealthy are usually not happier than the not so wealthy - they've mentally adjusted to their new state.

So if you find yourself depressed and can't talk to anyone, you can at least count on time to heal your wound.

Re: Founder Depression

#84

Another good resource is the classic "Feeling Good" [1], which describes basic cognitive behavioral therapy in a self-help format. It's old but good and has been validated in clinical trials. [1] http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0380810336?pc_redir=1402628516...

After years of bouncing around therapists, I found CBT. It fit my personality (obsessive, perfectionist, anxious) so well and has altered, for the better, how I approach every thought.

Re: Founder Depression

#85
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comments in this thread are illogical, antiquated, and misogynistic. Illogical -- "Not everybody make a fortune doing entrepreneurship and that's why it's hard." It's hard because not everybody gets rich? No, it's hard because you're doing something difficult; the difficulty level has nothing to do with getting rich. Many people work on startups for reasons other than cashing in. Antiquated -- suffering depressi…

Just a tip that I hope is helpful to you. I agree that the parent comment is a bad comment. But it's also a two-sentence comment, and one that was clearly heading for the illegible light grey abyss. So what I'm suggesting you think about next time you comment is how much weight you're donating to that comment by dignifying it with a long response. Another thing to consider is that when you take an ill-considered and…

This is hard-won HN wisdom. It's 100% correct and, if everyone would take it to heart, would make a huge difference around here. Flames would still break out, but they'd die off for being oxygen-deprived.

If I may tack on one thing: if you have flagging privileges, please flag comments that are truly bad for HN. You can do that by clicking 'link' above the comment, which will take you to the item page which has a 'flag' link. We monitor those flags and take action based on them.

Re: Founder Depression

#87
Dig deeper, Sam.

Achievement-oriented people are given to depression both when they fail and when they succeed. If your identity is tied up in your work, then you feel bad about yourself when work isn't going well. That's obvious, and that's the message of this blog post. The implicit message is that you're depressed because you're not succeeding, so get your shit together and succeed and be happy like everyone else.

But then if you do succeed, you start to wonder, why did I just spend my youth in this masochistic, narcissistic path, and why the fuck am I not as happy as I was expecting, and is this really all there is in life. This is a classic "achiever in crisis." The problem is that you realize all along you've been doing things that OTHER people wanted -- that is, you've been doing things that make you valuable in society -- perfect summed up in the raison d'etre du jour, "making the world a better place." And nobody stopped you, because who can argue with making the world a better place? (Or being a doctor, or whatever.) But upon reflection, you quickly realize that this was in many ways easier than asking yourself what YOU wanted out of life. I.e. you've pushed aside your innate feelings and desires, whatever they may have been, and replaced them with the external motivation of achievement, under the rationale that you'd be able to "figure it out" after you had "made it".

Unfortunately achievers aren't really sure what they want "deep down" because achievement is inherently defined by society, and then after they've "made it" they freak out because they start to wonder if there even is a "deep down" or if they're just a highly educated donkey chasing a carrot.

If you talk to e.g. people who've gone through rigorous Ph.D. programs, you'll find a number of them were severely depressed after their defense. It was just kind of a let-down after such a long buildup, and then they started to wonder why they invested the entirety of their twenties into it and question whether that's really what they wanted their life to be. At least before the defense they could have something look forward to, and the various requirements provided a source of manic energy to propel the achiever forward.

Anyway I don't think the problem here is "not enough success," and I don't think the solution is having more coffee meetings. Founders need to take a hard look in the mirror and ask themselves why they're doing what they're doing and whether their depression is truly a function of their free cash flow or if there's a deeper dissonance between the founder's feelings and the expectations of society, i.e. the heroic mythology of the founder that Silicon Valley has been inculcating in susceptible teenagers for the last 20 years.

Just my 2c. I am not a founder just an observer and aspiring societal psychiatrist. If you want to learn more I highly recommend "The Wisdom of the Enneagram":

http://www.amazon.com/Wisdom-Enneagram-Psychological-Spiritu...

It looks a lot like astrological pseudoscientific trash but read it and see if things in it resonate with you.

Ok back to work.

Re: Founder Depression

#90
I worked up the restaurant industry, opened my first restaurant in 2007. Second in 2009. In 2009 I was 24.

Leased the first location, bought the second for about $2 mil, ($100k down)... Economy took a crap, road work, city restrictions, fking Denny's decided to open right next to my first location. I closed in 2010. Sole-Proprietor. Combine taxes, bills, loans, etc.. I was looking at around 1.5 mil in debt. I had $400 about at the time. The newspaper had me front page for closing, social media blew up, everyone wants to know wtf happened.

I made ALOT of mistakes, not saying I am a complete victim but it hurts... REAL bad. So I ran and hid. Couldn't own a bank account, had to move. All those "friends" ain't friends we you are in the gutter. Worked random jobs just to eat and pay rent on a shared room in a new town. Decided to code because it looked better than my bartending/sales jobs.

Learned code and now in the industry. Its fun to hear people get VC help, a co-founder, community support, nothing really on the line but other peoples money and time. Not saying that it's everyone or even the OP, but things could be sooooo much harder when falling from grace. When you get on your knees in front of all your staff and beg the power company rep not to shut off the lights, you are pretty close to that wonderful feeling. "Run it till the wheels fall off.."

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