How I Controlled Stress as a Founder

I wrote earlier about how I control stress at work. That applies to most of us, whether we’re employees, consultants or founders. But there are some points that apply specifically to founders, which this post discusses.

But before I begin, a disclaimer: this is what I did when I was running my startup. These worked for me personally. They may or may not work for you given who you are and the circumstances you choose to put yourself in. That’s a decision only you can make. So treat this blog post as one possible way of working for you to explore with an open mind, think about, and add the points you agree with to your way of working.

With that context, let’s get started:

First, I had enough money saved to live for years without income. This gave me the time to make mistakes and learn. If I start another startup, I will make mistakes, so I better budget for it, by having two years of expenses in a personal emergency fund plus whatever expenses (salaries, laptops, office…) I plan to incur. Not budgeting for mistakes doesn’t prevent them; it just makes them hurt more. If you don’t have the money, wait a few years, and think about what kind of experience you can gain in the meantime, what skills you can pick up, to make your startup have a higher chance of success.

Second, I didn’t have any loans, which is more often than not good financial planning, anyway.

Third, I chose to be capital- rather than time-efficient. For example, I didn’t hire half a dozen people to progress quicker, because it will cost more money. One of the startups I was advising hired 40 people and didn’t have the maturity to manage them well, so they got maybe 20 people’s worth of work from them. If you’re starting your first startup, you will make a lot of mistakes. For example, the first time I managed people, I was a bad manager. It took me a year to learn how to be a good manager. You can’t speed up this learning just because you need to, any more than you can learn tennis in a week just because you have a competition coming up. So take it easy by giving yourself the time to grow.

Fourth, a lot of well-intentioned people will advise you on what you need to do, which may not be feasible. For example, one of my advisors told me that I need to figure marketing out in parallel with developing the product. In retrospect, he was right. But since I was running everything, I didn’t have the time or focus for marketing. The gap between what I needed to do and what I could do caused stress for a long time. Eventually I stopped beating myself up. I ignored his advice. I told him, “I understand your point, and you may be right, but I don’t have the capability to do this, so I’ll do what I can.”

Fifth, maintain an emotional distance from your startup. You are not your startup. If your startup fails, you haven’t failed as a professional. Only one project you happened to take on over the course of your career has failed. For the last year or so of my startup’s life, I kept thinking about what else I could be doing, started writing my resume, thinking about consulting, etc. When I decided to shut down our startup, we pivoted to a consultancy smoothly. I could do this only because I planted seeds earlier in my mind and brainstorming with trusted advisors. Give yourself optionality, a plan B and maybe even a plan C. This avoids a sense of not knowing what to do next, which is unnerving and stressful. A friend disapproved of my strategy, saying I need to be all in. But that ties your identity and emotions to your startup, making you sink if it sinks. Instead try to build watertight compartments in a ship where if one compartment floods, it doesn’t sink the whole ship.

Sixth, when your savings dwindle to 2 years worth of expenses, shut down your startup.

Seventh, don’t make rosy promises to anyone, be it employees, cofounders or investors. It just puts unreasonable pressure on you. Talk about the potential, sure, but also set reasonable expectations. For example I chose not to raise money from investors partly because you have to make completely unrealistic promises, which creates huge stress.

Eighth, people are always telling you that you should do things in a certain way, but if you listen, you lose your way. If you believe something, take that approach. Stick with it till it runs its course, and then see if it worked. Don’t second-guess yourself every month along the way. You’ll lose your confidence, and you’ll never know what to do. Don’t listen to people, or if you do, be quick to reject what they’re saying if it doesn’t match what you’re saying. There are different paths one can take, so pick one that works for you and stop thinking about alternative paths that others are advocating. That would be like deciding to vacation in New Zealand but every day of your vacation, wondering if you should have gone to Europe instead. Going ahead with confidence and clarity gives you a sense of calm.

In summary, the most important factor to optimise for is you — your well-being, your stress, your happiness. These are more important than the milestones. And optimising for myself let me run my startup for more than three years, dealing with one setback after another, which I could not have done had I created a pressure cooker environment. Again, I’m not saying these are right — these worked for me.