Founder Depression

Singaporeans, hit me up! :-) Here to listen.

>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.

No, I think depression is a function of free cash flow for most "founders." The heroic mythology is mostly about getting really rich.

And how else do you justify highly intelligent people caring so much about laundry? Because I seriously doubt solving laundry or food delivery or ridesharing has anything to do with any social mission.

These boring things have everything to do with making lots of money.

I've thought a lot about depression over the years. I also talked to a Psychiatrist about my melancholy for over 20 years. He has told me there are basically three differnt types of depression; situational(your life sucks), dysthymia(low level depression, that seems to linger), clinical depression(you want to end it all).

Supposedly, drugs are effective in clinical depression--I don't think I have been that depressed.

My life flew off the rails years ago. I went from a guy who thought life, school, and sucess came to easy; to a guy who couldn't walk in a grocery store because I felt dizzy around people, and had daily panic attacks. Over the years, the anxiety improved, but then depression set in. Sleep became reversed. I became an alohoholic, etc.

Well, I don't have any sure fire cures, but I do know this you will get better with age. There were times when I thought it just isn't going away, but the bad feelings do go away. You will forget just how bad you felt. I spent about a year in Therapy(2 x week). I'm not sure how nuch it helped, but it did alleviate some concerns I had at the time. I didn't have any big break throughs, but I'm glad I went. I found the more a Psychologist charged, or the fact that they had a Ph.D didn't matter whatsoever. The worst person I saw was a $400/hr Psychiatrist. The best was a 15.00/hr student working on their Masters. As to medication, you will need to see a Psychiatrist; shop around! Personally, the only medications that worked in my case were highly addictive, but they were better on my body than alcohol I was abusing All I can say is you will feel better, and you are not alone.

> One brief tip: it is OK to give up your startup - don't feel that you can't.

It is hard for me to accept this Paul. If I talk to someone giving up their startup, I'd ask them to hold on for some more time and keep trying.

It has been more than 6 months since we wound up our startup. I have plenty of reasons why it failed. Team conflicts, No focussed idea - and many more. But whatever reasoning I come up with, what hits me when I gave up on my startup and even now, is my lack of persistence and determination. I've failed...

I've moved on physically. But I haven't been able to forgive myself for not being determined and persistent; which is what a founder should have. It haunts me. I wish I could have seen through it, even if it boils down to being a solo-founder.

Well said.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4EDhdAHrOg [1:41 "It's not about the nail"]

The video is about women, because as men we like to take pride in the idea that we're "fixers", but if we're honest about it we'll have to admit that when it comes to the important things in life we're just as full of crap.

No amount of talking, hand-holding, support groups and nods of understanding will amount to any kind of personal progress, until you are willing to answer the question "What do you really want?"

You want to be productive? Have a successful startup? Million dollars? Improve the lives of others?

Sure. But why? What's behind it? We like to look for an objective meaning in things, but what is meaning other than the belief in a cosmic points system that will bestow rewards upon us if we play our roles right?

Whether you are a startup founder, career person, scientist, devout christian, philanthropist, volunteer or whatever makes no essential difference here - pretty much everyone chases some ill-defined ideal in the hope that somehow some ill-defined someone or something will save us and make everything alright when we reach some ill-defined goal.

And when you do succeed, what do you really have to show for it? Years of sacrifice gone that you'll never get back, even more expectations than before, because now you're supposed to act like a successful person, even more anxiety that you'll disappoint the people who idolize you, eager to believe in the fairy-tale that you've made it and everything's happily-ever-after-picture-perfect. Everyone has at least some stories of disappointment with success. Everyone knows people who do. Show me one happily ever after.

It's a blind gamble with the only thing we do have - time, and we keep pissing that away because it's easier than seriously asking the question that could shake the very foundation of the persons we believe ourselves to be and the reality we believe ourselves to live in.

Everything needs to be ill-defined, because otherwise we would see that it doesn't make sense and couldn't keep pretending that we're doing something worthwhile while what we're actually doing is killing time waiting for death and imagining that there's no hurry and someone's coming to save us.

To seriously and honestly admit what you want is fucking hard. It's a question that takes no prisoners. The very act of asking sets you apart from family, friends and society, forces you to see that in the things that matter to you most, you are in fact alone. For most of us considering an honest answer to that question amounts to what is commonly considered one of the greatest sins - being selfish.

We're afraid of being selfish, we're afraid of sinning against the people around us by rejecting their rules and desires, we're afraid of being alone and we're afraid of dying, so we keep playing our roles and pretending to everyone around us.

At the same time deep inside we know that nothing matters, we know that we're all selfish by design, we know we have nothing to lose because we'll all be gone soon anyway and we have a pretty good idea of what we want to do before we end up cancer-ridden in a hospice, smiling bitterly at the memory of what used to matter to us and the times when we could have lived but didn't because we were too busy pretending we could hide from death.

My girlfriend just came in the room and glanced at my screen as I'm finishing typing this and for a second I was really terrified she'd see what I was writing. It seemed ridiculous to at first, but then I realized I just don't want to admit that realizing things amounts to nothing unless you act.

I may just have run out of excuses.