Founders’ silent struggle — overcoming setbacks
Having high control of themselves is the job of a skilled leader. Needless to say, there is no person in this world who could suppress panics and strong emotions without eventually becoming physically or psychologically ill.
The interviewed founders shared learnings that helped them to become stronger winners at their lowest points.
1. Asking for help
One of the hardest things for a founder to do is to ask for help.
Many want to resolve everything themselves without allowing anybody and even themselves to see their weaknesses.
Talking with the right people about the problems lets us unstuck ourselves from the same perspective and see the situations from new lights.
Asking for help only means resolving problems faster! And time is the essence of the startup.
2. Finding emotional support
Lack of emotional support was what makes founders quit too soon.
Having a supportive community of like-minded fellow entrepreneurs helped many in restoring the motivation. It becomes important to see that you are not alone going through rough times and it’s a normal part of every startup journey.
In addition, every interviewed successful founder revealed that they had a special person with whom they could privately and openly vent about their complicated situations and their feelings.
However, that person was not just any person, it was a person would it be a friend, spouse, family member, mentor, or coach who knew how to provide needed emotional safety and the right kind of help.
3. Building a family
The most unexpected find from the interviews was that many founders mentioned how having family and children helped them to succeed in startup life. It is expected that founders would spend many nights in the office building their startups. There is even a notion that if a founder that goes home at 7 pm is not serious about their venture’s success.
“Sometimes you feel guilty for not working as many hours as others while building a startup but at the same time having a family keeps everything that is happening in a startup world in perspective. Family and children remind you what is most important in life.”
This perspective helped founders in managing their mental sanity and make better decisions in the startup. Making time for family thought how to better structure days. Also, the family provided so needed emotional or even financial support during hard times in building a venture.
By talking to people you don’t let yourself be dragged down the hall of spiraling negative thoughts and emotions. Expressing frustration of “what the fuck to do next” and having a chance to tell what you feel. Having a supportive family who does not put pressure on you keeps you balanced.
The biggest needs
“Every time when it’s really difficult you start asking yourself if this lifestyle is really for you. But when you know that you have a chance to make a difference in the world, then you roll up your sleeves and face the problems. What if this thing does not work — it is still the best time of my life” Tommaso Troiani, a founder of swabit.app.
Founders need to have high energy and the ability to generate diverse resources for at least 4 to 10 years of constant emotional and financial turbulence, painful pivots, and multiple times starting from square one.
It’s ok if a response to turbulence and sudden startup swings is shrieking and puking, however, a founder should have a strong recovery plan and support system to help them to clean up and go on the ride again.
Founders listed their biggest needs:
- Fundraising, how to screen investors and prepare for next rounds better
- More sales, salespeople, digital marketing
- Improving skills of communication, presenting, and pitching
- Teaching team an entrepreneurial mindset and how to recover from failures healthier
- Business models at different business stages
- Connections finding the right mentors and coaches
- Creating better physiological and psychological health for better stress management, handling negative thoughts and emotions, keeping calm during turbulent times
- Becoming mentally stronger, getting better rest, maintaining motivation and energy
- Managing better introverted or extroverted capacities
PS.: Some tools can be found at the Disciplined Entrepreneurship and Disciplined Entrepreneurship Toolbox.
5 skills to succeed
Being a founder is a constant rollercoaster of excitement and stress. Unfortunately, that thrill becomes the biggest challenge to maintain a calm and healthy attitude managing this long journey of sky-high ups and painful lows.
As startup life challenges founders at every level, survivors of this journey graciously shared the major 5 skills that they had to master to sustain the long road of building a successful startup.
Human skills enhance you at technical skills.
1. Stamina for failures
Developing a startup idea into a stable business takes around 4–10 years. Discovering the place for something that’s never been done before it takes a very long and intense marathon of constant challenges and crashes.
“I make room for mistakes so there would be room for growth” shared Tommaso Troiani, founder of swabit.app.
You cannot avoid failures because they are part of a startup innovation process, however, you can learn how to recover from them fast without damaging yourself physically, mentally, and emotionally.
Besides, pushing yourself as a founder you also have to have the energy to keep inspiring everyone around you. On a long journey, people get tired and no one but a founder has to lift everyone’s spirits and confidence.
“A lot of founders set a too high pace from the beginning that burns the steam too fast. However, building a successful startup is a very long marathon” Anders Røpke, Founder of windpowerlab.com.
Finding a balance to maintain stamina and the courage to keep going become fundamental skills to master.
2. Meaningful relationships
The startup, more so than anything else, requires the biggest pool of resources for its survival. The most significant resources lie in access to as diverse as a possible network of experts.
As a founder you need to surround yourself with the best possible people that are smarter than you for finding the right members for your startup team, finding the most fitting investors, partners, suppliers, and so on.
Networking is not about creating a quantity but quality relationships.
Would it be asking for advice, referral, assistance, investment, joining your team, or even making a sale — you have to know what value you can generate for them that they really care about.
Building meaningful relationships where you can enhance each other’s life with cooperation is not easy. It requires attention, empathy, and time. That also entails advancing self-awareness of your impact on others’ life, embracing the diversity of people’s cultures, backgrounds, experiences, and conflicting ideas, honest and trustworthy communications.
3. Flexibility to capture opportunities
Many times founders find themselves as lonely warriors on the field against the whole world. They are misunderstood, rejected, and challenged in every step. The battle for a dream becomes a rigid stand of no compromises, “my way or a highway” attitude. But is it the right approach to create a meaningful impact?
Everything changes faster than we can keep up, we need to look forward to the future and adapt now. Many more opportunities lie in front of us when we are flexible with our views and open to hearing new options.
“I liked the idea and was ready to invest, however, the founder didn’t want to cooperate in adjusting the product development plan so it could fit our needs too” interviewed investor shared.
Be flexible with the products, plans, and strategies but stay true to your values.
4. Curiosity to learn
When there are so many unknowns and uncertainties the only option to survive is to keep the focus on learning.
Finding comfort in being constantly in doubt but determined to grow, being never assuming and always curious helps us to avoid deadly stagnations.
Curiosity drives us to be creative and looking for more options than only having one or believing that it is the “best” one. Curiosity lets us be ahead and not be swallowed by competitors. Most importantly, focus on curiosity allows us to recover from failures faster and better.
Curiosity allows us to see more, be more and have more.
5. Earning trustworthiness
There is always an incline to paint a nicer picture in order to get the results “easier”, “faster” or being able to move forward at all. The startup culture is soaked in the “fake it until you make it” mindset. People are becoming wary of believing each other.
Credibility needs time and it’s built by staying true to your word through actions as small as not being late or calling when promised.
“Pretending to know everything and bull shit your way it’s too stressful. It is setting a trap for yourself,” shared Paul Rapacioli, founder of “The Local”.
Even how small lies they always surface. As startup success is so greatly dependent on cooperation the trustworthiness is the major indicator to build meaningful and flourishing partnerships.
You are your startup, your appearance, behavior, and words create the image for your startup.
Key takeaways
Getting addicted to the constant high of an adrenaline rush is exciting. A dream of changing the world and making a difference is inspiring. Pressure, competition, passion for the dream force people to push abilities beyond their limits. Startups and sports are very similar in that. However, the support systems are very different between founders and professional athletes.
In sports, elites have all the help to drive their performance results. They train every muscle on their body and mind to handle pressures, they are supervised by doctors and advised by personal coaches daily.
Founders, in contrast to athletes, have to learn how to survive these pressures on their own, in silence and constantly pretending what everything is “amazing”.
If we want to get stronger and not weaker from failures it all depends on our preparation to face them.
Due to startup development pace and experimentation with novel ideas founders have to elevate their self-management skills to much higher levels.
Key takeaways reflecting on founders from all around the world candid interviews:
- Pivots are necessary;
- Startup failure doesn’t mean that the founder is a failure;
- Have a financial and emotional safety net;
- Never sacrifice family;
- Build meaningful relationships;
- Ask for help sooner;
- Create a very strong support system.
Stronger founder, stronger startup, better world!
Inga Stasiulionyte, Olympian, Master Performance Coach, and sports industry consultant, shares the high-performance insights and case studies of the challenges that her clients face.
