191–200 of 210 posts
I wish I could explain what I'm going through right now, as a founder, but I legally can't. The few people that know what I'm going through have said it's the hardest situation they've heard a startup founder in, ever. I hope to one day tell my story. Let's just say, it involves dealing with somebody that developed severe mental illness, quickly.
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It's possible to do both, though. As I pointed out elsewhere in this thead, Sam's post is very helpful and to the point, but there is a lot of undiagnosed psychiatric illness in the startup world. Much of it largely self-inflicted by excessive pressure, lack of sleep and long hours. This is a point which is willfully ignored in this forum, so it's very worthy of being discussed.
I agree with that. There's too much macho, "look at me work 24/7 and never sleep" nonsense in the startup world, and it's bad for everyone.
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I agree with that. There's too much macho, "look at me work 24/7 and never sleep" nonsense in the startup world, and it's bad for everyone.
It's reassuring to hear someone who's definitely a high-profile industry insider say this, thanks for taking the time to respond. Seems obvious to me as an outsider, but it's probably easy to be blinded by the status quo.
Successful companies take many years to build. If founders burn out after a few years, they will never be a big success.
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.…
Everything we do in life is to feel a certain way. Anything with a brain is driven to acquire certain feelings and move away from others. And all feelings have to do with the future. That is, feelings are either 1. a prediction of what you believe will happen in the future. For example, happiness is the belief that something good will happen in the future. 2. a feeling that you should feel in the future when you come…
I've heard that hypothesised, mostly in Tony Robbins style self help books, but have come to the conclusion that it's an oversimplification of the human condition. I mean if you were building a Mk2 human from scratch you might build it that way be we did not arise that way - we evolved from reptile like creatures which had extra stuff bolted on when they evolved to monkey like, chimp like and finally human like beings. As a result much of what we do is as a result of ancient mechanisms resulting in actions that do not always make us feel good. For example you might lose you temper and hit or shout at someone in ways you feel bad about almost straight away but it was not done to feel good, it was done because some ancient aggression instinct got triggered.
This stuff I think complicates the whole business of dealing with depression which like aggression often comes from the more primitive parts of the brain. I'm not sure what the answer is. Trial and error to some extent. Also it can be interesting to look at what makes cat, dogs and the like happy or sad as we are probably subject to the same mechanisms.
Dear Sam, It's interesting to hear you speak about founder depression as you sit on top of the world. Our team, openhospital.com, interviewed at YCombinator 6 weeks ago for the current batch and we failed (rejection email below). The $1100 interview reimbursement we received from YC only covered 1/3 of the cost of the trip and the time/energy spent applying could have been time and money spent coding and developing o…
1. You website looks great. Looks like functionality is not fully done though? I was clicking on "Book Now" but it didnt do anything. Maybe it was because I did not sign in. Maybe make that clear in error box.
2. YC keeps repeating the advice to do things that do not scale; focus on week at a time. Your vision is ambitious-- which is great, but on execution, scale down to bare minimum. e.g.,
2a) Website is designed for search anywhere, but drop down is only for Phoenix. It is totally fine to focus on Phoenix only initially. In fact, go more aggressive, remove that screen altogether, make it clear that this is only for Phoenix. In fact remove the search form too. Directly list the 8 results you have on the page.
2b) The result page has airbnb like feeling.. but you have only 8 listing so far. Can you make that result page more catchy, remove the need to click through into each listing. Design it more like Pinterest, large picture, title, brief description, and book now link, all in that page. No need to click through to detail page. FWIW, airbnb in its early days went to each one of their hosts home, took pictures, and edited descriptions manually. Totally worth it.
2c) Why ask for account? You need that only for repeat users.. for one time bookings, just give them a form with email/phone, etc. fields. An account is a high barrier for intial adoption. Dont force it until you must. PG hated even a service like quora for a long time, because it forced an account creation.
3) Who is your target user? Initially, you do not need internet to promote this type of service. Do something old-school, like physical banners, with a phone number. People will call you, and you tell them on phone which doctors are available for what price. And do the booking on phone. Put your fliers in walgreens/cvs (dont worry about policy, you only need to convince the store manager). Put flier infront of walmart or wholefoods or target-- depending on demographic of your intial users.
4) Dont beat yourself for not getting into YC. They have two goals-- a) do good in the world, and b) make money. I can see you are early enough that signal is not clear for making money aspect. Fix that-- show some intial traction by doing things that do not scale.
5) Their feedback email tells you clearly that the issue is founders have varying commitments. Fix that. You do not need four founders-- two great ones, who are on board full time or with significant commitment in time or money-- is sufficient. Talk with them, ask them to leave if they are not on board fully. It is even fine to do this alone-- you are passionate enough, and you will have no excuse then.
6) If you need help with programming, I can offer some of my free time. Tweet me: @kabragovind
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.…
I disagree. Your psychological understanding has a long way to go. In fact, this sounds like someone rationalizing a lack of achievement rather than trying to understand the true motivations of an achievement oriented person. The path is not masochistic or narcissistic. In fact, I take offense to that. The path is what separates the wheat from the chaff. It is the price for admission...table stakes. Achievement orien…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I disagree. Your psychological understanding has a long way to go. In fact, this sounds like someone rationalizing a lack of achievement rather than trying to understand the true motivations of an achievement oriented person. The path is not masochistic or narcissistic. In fact, I take offense to that. The path is what separates the wheat from the chaff. It is the price for admission...table stakes. Achievement orien…
you insulted the OP twice in your first two sentences. then you said that depression is "table stakes"...after that, it's extremely hard for the rest of your long and well-written comment to be taken seriously. just an observation.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
you insulted the OP twice in your first two sentences. then you said that depression is "table stakes"...after that, it's extremely hard for the rest of your long and well-written comment to be taken seriously. just an observation.
If being honest and truthful is an insult, then there's nothing I can do about that. I'm insulted by his attempts to get into my head without actually understanding what makes it tick. His comment was extremely presumptuous.
But in your post you say:
>>The path is not masochistic or narcissistic. In fact, I take offense to that.
The first two years consisted of my mind bouncing back and forth between dreams and depression. Now I've matured, at least emotionally, to where I feel emotionally invincible. I guess I just got used to it, the uncertainty, the hopes, the fears. This has become my norm, and living with it is much easier and honestly pretty effortless at this point.
If anyone feels like they need someone to talk to, send me an email (in my profile). If you're in San Francisco, we can also get coffee.