(Founder’s) Depression

Before I begin, if you are an entrepreneur/founder binge watch Sam Altman’s: How To Start A Startup on YouTube. Big ups to Tyler Scriven, Director at Techstars Atlanta for the suggestion.

Episode 13 “stars” Executive Chairman and co-Founder Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn, ironically titled How to be a Great Founder. What he says in this episode got me thinking about my own journey of being a solo founder and what I heard coined for the first time as “Founder’s Depression”.

I am not an expert so I do not want to dive deep into the actual diagnosis, but essentially when founder’s get into a rut, it can lead to suicide. Fmr. Senior Tech Correspondent at Mashable, Christina Warren, took fingers to keyboard to bring attention to this reality in 2013; After Aaron Swartz: The Tech World Must Talk About Depression. Christina wrote,

“The guy was a genius, in the purest sense of the word.”

If the good die young, then the sick die lonely. If Aaron’s success and outreach from his peers still was not enough, then how does one cope with failure, even with individuals who truly care about your well-being and success? Fmr. Senior Music Reporter, Brian Anthony Hernandez, had a further revealing Q&A with Ben Huh, Founder and CEO of Cheezburger, Ben Huh: What Saved His Life. This Q&A came after Ben took to his own blog post to detail his suicide tale titled, When Death Feels Like a Good Option.

Ben answers the final Q&A question with,

“Knowing I’m going to be doing something good. The process drives me, not the success itself.”

This response was the answer that pushed him to live and live with continued purpose.

I was recently talking to my good friend, James Abney, and he was recapping a conversation he was having with his mom about me and this “process” I’m going through being a tech founder. The thing that stuck out to me was he used the phrase “rite of passage” and that you MUST go through it.

Fast forward to today and I wake up to watch some Mark Suster Snapstorms and one of his storms about leadership, he talks about the founder being the Chief Psychologist. Important to understand how to engage the morale and have an idea of mental capacity of your team(s). No need to g0 back to school for this, but before you take on the task of starting a company, ask yourself can you take on the personalities (even if you do choose) that come along with building this?

A few snaps in he touches on the founder being aware of his/her own mental health and seek other founders to have open dialogue with about it all. I know that sounds very tech focused, but translate it to, talk to people who can relate, will be the least judgemental while also offering assistance and guidance to some degree.

After watching the snaps and seeing the specific snap related to founder’s seeking outlets, all of these emotions rushed back for me when Reid mentioned those anchor weighted words back in July via YouTube, one of those “is he talking to me through the screen?”.

With it being all too familiar I jumped on Facebook and in the matter of a few swipes, I was reading a shared post from my friend Cat Noone, the title, After Aaron Swartz: The Tech World Must Talk About Depression. I shared Mark’s snapstorm and Ben’s Mashable Q&A with her and left the comment,

“Think I’m going to step up and write about it as well. Thanks for sharing.”

Yes, we’re still in Aug 12th and all this happened before 10 am. Done with FB, I did what many millennial’s would do next after already having been on Twitter and exiting the app… opened Twitter back up. I did some retweeting and tweeting and then I came across the picture below in a tweet and knowing where I am in my rite of passage, I thanked the Lord for my many blessings and struggles and knew today was the day to share this with you my friend.

Amen.

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, 24 hours- Call 1–800–273–8255

Michael Cowherd is a 2x failed 9–5er and founder of OTW!