Sam: Would you really say the above to the families of Illya or Faigy? Because in effect, you did do just that. Which to me makes you a pretty shitty human being—and thus quite different from most founders I’ve met over the years. Unless of course, you’re just stuck on the binary track of thought I wrote this article to encourage folks to step-back from and take a second look at, which would then simply put your foot firmly in your mouth (which I personally do all the damn time, on an aside). Not auf you as a shitty human being. I hope the latter is in fact, the case.
Angel investors & accelerators (as passionately characterized by Chris Sacca in this messy thread from 2010) do care deeply about the well-being of their founders. I know this directly, from being friends with a few—but also, I did (and still do) do believe the folks who stood behind my own jab at a startup, really did want me—Nina—to succeed and be ok in the longrun, regardless at the ROI they could tally from their interaction with me.
Traditional VCs have rarely been inclined to give founders any ability to cash out claiming it makes them less “hungry”. As someone who, just five years ago, had net worth of exactly zero dollars, I remember the difference between being “panicked” and “hungry”. As I have invested in more and more companies, I have learned that many founders would benefit dramatically from even the smallest amounts of cash (compared to the overall deal size). I have worked hard to get my founders as little as $25,000 to pay off credit cards and student loans. Or, in a small deal that closed this week, I was able to get a founder the money so he can pay for his wedding and not have to worry about taking on debt. I, and the other investors in this group who do the same thing, feel good about helping our founders in this way.
That above quote from the Chris Sacca is kinda my fav, and perfectly captures the sentiment I wrote my piece to capitalize on with some structure and broader sense of purpose.
Secondly, as seasoned business-peeps, investors do know this to be a fact: people do better work when not crippled by anxiety, exhaustion, or depression. When we survive the crazy times, it feels euphoric—because by our very nature as humans, we in many ways defied the odds. The purpose of this piece was to spin-around and honor those odds, though. To honor the lives and livelihoods lost.
As I pointed-out in my article however, the very real relationship dynamic between investment firms and founders is that founders are chips on the table of craps that Investors hold court on. Given that Investors have also demonstrated the capacity to care though, and that caring benefits their ROIs in the long run, my proposal is to give more structure to founder well-being support—and to address the “real” issues. Not just the ¡¡¡OMGWTF!!! headlights our deer-eyes get fixated on in our tunnel-vision realities.
We may be founders and investors, but we’re also all human. As humans, we’re both too vulnerable to all probably end-up on the right side of “fight or die,” and we’re too smart to know things have to be that way.
So: keep the fire, stoke the hunger, but my fucking god—keep some emotional soylent in the picture too, so nobody dies or suffers permanent/lasting self-development damage from what should be transformative experiences in the positive, in the long-run.