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Ask YC: Dealing with post startup depression

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Re: Ask YC: Dealing with post startup depression

#41

Post by mechanical_fish »

dmv wrote: post #33
utnick wrote: post #3

the best scorers in basketball have whats called shooters amnesia. They don't think about the shot they just missed. It isnt part of their reality. Focus on the next thing. don't tie your self esteem to your last shot

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVXiG6oy5eo "I have missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. On 26 occasions I have been entrusted to take the game winning shot... and missed. And I have failed over and over and over again in my life." In my experience, the best athletes have a spooky accurate memory of failure... post-game. They figure out what went wrong, every time it went wrong, even…

So it is not amnesia, it is just a failure to influence their present action.

This reminds me of my college friend who spent much of his spare time climbing the outsides of campus buildings, smokestacks, et al..

Then one day he claimed to be afraid of heights, which made me laugh. "How can you be afraid of heights when you're constantly taking risks at high altitude?", I asked. His response was something like: "Oh, I'm afraid. But I can ignore that and keep going."

Re: Ask YC: Dealing with post startup depression

#42

Post by yan »

THE ROAD TO WISDOM? Well, it's plain and simple to express. Err and err and err again, but less and less and less. — Piet Hein.

If you look at anyone successful, the reason you know about them is rarely their first endeavor. Everyone can start and and shut down a start up, but people that continue that cycle are those that succeed.

Re: Ask YC: Dealing with post startup depression

#44

Post by eusman »

utnick wrote: post #3

the best scorers in basketball have whats called shooters amnesia. They don't think about the shot they just missed. It isnt part of their reality. Focus on the next thing. don't tie your self esteem to your last shot

bad analogy i'd say. they may lose some shots but their team mates may score better that day.

At the end of the day, their target is to win the game so it doesn't matter who lost any number of the shots. If they lost the game then the team and all fans are emotionally affected.

The players will get paid at the end of the day. If a startup fails nobody cares and you are certainly not gonna get paid.

Re: Ask YC: Dealing with post startup depression

#45

Post by SwellJoe »

I've been there. Just remember that the best indicator of future success in business is having tried before--even if you failed. In the valley, it's a truism that VCs don't mind seeing a couple of failed companies in your past, as long as it's clear that you learned something from them. There's even some evidence that the same investors that gave you money last time (and you lost) are actually more likely to invest in your new company than someone they've just met who has no record of failure. Weird, huh? Failure is practically a virtue in high risk business like tech startups.

Take some time off, work on something else that's a little less stressful (I did part-time contract work for a couple of companies that I enjoyed working with--contract work pays well, and gives you lots of time off to relax), play some video games, talk to girls/boys, learn a new language or to play a musical instrument, read good books, enjoy time with your family/pets/friends.

In six months, or a year, you'll feel rested and ready to dig in again. It'll actually come sooner if you have an idea that you really love. That is what happened for me, though I had some downtime before finally giving up on my previous business where I'd stopped selling the products that I'd always sold and started slowly evolving the business into something else--but I was accepting no new clients, so the workload was quite low.

Re: Ask YC: Dealing with post startup depression

#46

Post by webwright »

There is a hellacious amount of luck in startups. The best startup guys generally admit that it was luck/market that was responsible for a huge part of their success. Tremendous brains and a ton of effort is a big part of it, too.

The founder of Del.icio.us was at a YC dinner last night and talked about all of the miserable failures he had before Del.icio.us. Ev Williams had Pyra Labs' product before Blogger and Odeo before Twitter.

Failure abounds. Drink it in, learn from it and dive into your next one.

Or, if it makes you miserable, get a real job and some fun hobbies-- no shame in that!

Re: Ask YC: Dealing with post startup depression

#47

Post by astrec »

utnick wrote: post #3

the best scorers in basketball have whats called shooters amnesia. They don't think about the shot they just missed. It isnt part of their reality. Focus on the next thing. don't tie your self esteem to your last shot

In game, sure.

But post game the coaches and players go back to the tapes and see what they can learn from the game. Then they hit the practice courts.

As an aside, my personal experience is that success can also be cause for depression, feelings of failure and weakness. Growing is hard. Surrendering control, and the (inevitable?) cultural dilution post acquisition is hard. It was my baby. Now it's not.

For this too you mourn.

Re: Ask YC: Dealing with post startup depression

#49

Post by phony_identity »

This is an evolved response, made for the paleolithic era. Your brain thinks your tribe was just conquered by the neighboring tribe, and that your women and livestock have been taken. Evolution thinks you're lucky to be alive, and the best way to preserve that is to lay low for a while and be submissive as possible. The mechanism by which is does this is by temporarily cutting your testoterone level. Your T is low, so you feel low and hopeless and the world seems a bit grey.

That was the smart move 50,000 years ago. Not now. You need to do things that bring the testosteroone back: hard exercise, especially weightlifting. Try to arrange for plenty of small, guaranteed wins in anything you're good at: video games, basketball, trivial pursuit, whatever. Get lots of sunlight! That's an easy one that boosts testosterone. There are probably other things that boost T. Google.

Bravo for asking this question. Great job in doing a startup in the first place. Consider this a hearty slap on the back.

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