I’m Tired of Not Talking About This: Founding with Depression
Having a chronic illness won’t keep your startup from changing the world.
trigger warning: mental health, mental illness, brief mentions of SI/SH
I was diagnosed with anxiety and depression when I was 13 years old. When I entered puberty, I started to have horrible depressive episodes, spiraling through thoughts about how I wasn’t good enough, and began to take extreme control of my food and exercise. Noticing that I wasn’t okay, my mom took me to a nutritionist, concerned that I had an eating disorder. We were instead directed to a psychologist who told us this was a symptom of mental health challenges. So I received my diagnosis before I entered 9th grade.
In the 18 years since then, I have struggled with self-hatred, self-harm, disordered eating habits, mental self-flagellation, paralyzing anxiety, and extreme, terrifying shame. I have had to go to the hospital. I have thought about suicide. I have scared loved ones, hurt relationships, and had panic attacks in public. I have visited more than four psychologists in four different cities. I have been on medication. My friends have had to research and make appointments with therapists for me, from across cities, when I felt too helpless. After one scary crash, I called my mom and asked her to come be with me to make sure I would make it out of danger. I lived 8,000 miles and three continents away. The flight cost more than $2,000, and she came the next day.
In those same 18 years, I finished high school, graduated from university, and launched my career in impact and education. After college, I moved to India and was motivated by the work of communities in the low-cost private school sector. Two years later, I moved to Kenya to work in that same space. 4 years ago, I launched a startup and began my journey as a social entrepreneur. To date, my company has worked with more than 20 incredible individuals, raised more than half a million dollars, and launched five products working in five sectors. We have reached more than 12,000 learners from low-income communities in Kenya with literacy, numeracy, financial literacy, and health education. We’re using basic technology in new and exciting ways to transform the way education is delivered for people who deserve it the most, and this makes me honored and proud.
And to this day, I have depression and anxiety. Like any chronic illness, it has its highs and lows, flare ups and quiet periods. I have learned new strategies and methods to deal with it, and I have been fortunate to have supportive family and friends to give me the love I need to manage it.
One of the hardest things about being an entrepreneur with depression and anxiety is not feeling able to talk openly about it. Especially during the lowest times, when you most need help.
Startup life, by its very nature, is brutal, terrifying, lonely, confusing, physically exhausting, and mind-breaking. There are no blueprints or pathways to success; that very exciting part of it also means the very real potential for failure. As you fundraise, earn users’ trust, start to make money, the pressure within you builds to make sure that your idea works, that you make the difference you promised you would make, and that you don’t let anyone down. You work longer hours, forego sleep, forget to eat, say no to friends, put off exercising, don’t visit your family — damaging your health, most especially and painfully in your mind.
That’s not the image an entrepreneur is expected to portray. At the beginning, your company is nothing. You are your brand. When you walk into investor meetings with nothing but a dream and a barely-working prototype, they say, “That’s fine! What we’re really interested in is how resilient you are. If we can take a bet on you. If you’re the person who’s going to persist and never give up and make this dream into a unicorn.” When you hire your first team members, you need them to believe in your leadership and trust that you’ll do right by their careers. When you pitch your first clients, you need to convince them that you’ll do everything it takes to give them the product that they want. (And this pressure is exponentially higher for women).
So when the future of your company is reliant on this image of an unflappable you — this brilliant, brave, hotshot entrepreneur who’s going to change the world — you’ll do whatever it takes to avoid showing weakness. Weakness is too much of a risk. And for some reason, we’re still being told that dealing with a chronic illness — despite rising above it, and doing great things through it — is a weakness.
I, personally, think that this is bullshit. Above everything, entrepreneurship is such a fantastically human endeavor. It is so human to come up with an idea, to think “I am the one who can make this idea a reality!”, to realize that trying it would be terrifying, and to decide to be courageous and try it anyway. To be sick and sad, sometimes, and to ask for help from your community to get through it, is part of this being fantastically human.
We need our entrepreneurs, tech heroes, innovators, and changemakers to be human. We need our leaders to have empathy. We need to build self-reflection and support into the startup toolkits we give ourselves, because above everything else, your company is only okay if you are okay.
Depression’s superpowers are in telling you that you’re not enough, that you’re alone, and that nothing will change. These things aren’t true, however much they feel like it. You can face mental health challenges and you can do great things.
Some Ideas for Entrepreneurs with Depression
1. Get three professionals to be on your team: a psychologist, a coach, and a guide for your spirit. Above everything, when you are dealing with a chronic mental illness, you need a trained medical specialist — a certified psychologist — that you can speak to as regularly as you need. Support their work with a life or professional coach to help you strategize the best life routine for you, and finally someone to help you build your spirit (I use this loosely — it can be a church leader, a meditation center, an outdoor gym instructor… whatever makes your insides feel at peace).
2. Talk about how you’re really feeling with your community of mentors and entrepreneurs. It’s easy for us to ask for help reviewing a pitch deck or a financial model, but hard to ask for help managing anxiety about not making payroll. There’s no way we can do this if not together.
3. Give yourself permission to do what you need to take care of yourself. Food, exercise, friends, self-care. For example, I really dislike grocery shopping and cooking, but for a long time I hated ordering in since it was expensive. So I just wouldn’t eat — which made my depression worse. Now, I have 3–4 go-to recipes from my mom with simple ingredients that are easy to make, or I order take out, or I accept my friends’ offers to make me dinner.
4. Sleep and wake up. I was very much bought into the founder martyrdom myth that glorifies staying up until 3am “for the cause”. The exhaustion burnt me out. My mental health improved so much when I forced myself to sleep and wake up at the same time every day — giving me a routine I didn’t have to stress and think about. And even on the worst days, it helps you just keep going.
Some Ideas for Friends of Entrepreneurs with Depression
In my lower moments, I would have no energy to do anything for myself. I spent my whole day running my company — making decisions, solving problems, managing people and projects — on whatever tiny mental energy I had. When (kind, loving) friends said, “Let me know what you need,” or “What can I do to help?”, I couldn’t come up with an answer. I had already exhausted my ability to solve problems or identify solutions. What helped me the most when friends offered to share some of that mental or physical burden.
A few good questions:
1. Can I come make you dinner/drop off food/order delivery for you?
2. Can I take you shopping/pick up something for you at the store?
3. Can I help you research therapists/coaches/doctors?
4. Can I help you brainstorm a solution to [some work problem] (even if I don’t work in your sector at all)?
5. Can I think about how to fix [some life challenge] with you?
6. Can I share with you my favorite sleep/meditation/relaxation apps?
7. Can I bring us to a workout class/do a virtual exercise video with you/help you put together a new workout schedule?
8. Can I check in on you later?
Finally, a huge help is when friends and family point out when I am showing symptoms and redirect me to my therapist.
Some Ideas for Investors in Entrepreneurs with Depression
1. Include humanity and empathy on the list of traits that you look for in founders.
2. Provide mental wellness and support services to your portfolio companies. I love free AWS credits, but I would also love a discount on online counseling — for myself and my team.
3. Explicitly state in your materials, website, and conversations that emotional intelligence is respected and encouraged in your startups — and follow through on that promise. There is very little space for me, as an entrepreneur, to speak freely about negative emotions and challenges (which indeed impact our company success) during monthly updates, when I’m also trying to convince you that we’re worthy of your bridge financing.
4. Examine and challenge your bias against emotion and mental health as a “risk”, especially for women who are entrepreneurs. There is a ton of research about how women are penalized and stereotyped for showing emotions, while men are praised for demonstrating big feelings. I intentionally flatten my expression and my affect in meetings, effectively dampening my personality, to be taken seriously.
