Getting past Impostor Syndrome as a startup founder
I was on a call with some fellow founders during a YC Build Sprint session last week and someone mentioned that he was struggling with Impostor Syndrome. He was having some serious feelings of doubt, fear and it was impacting on his motivation and will to keep on trucking with his startup.
This is by no means unusual. Startup is a journey with a very uncertain destination and it takes a LOT of dedication, willpower and sometimes sheer bloody mindedness to succeed. You also have to be willing to fail. I think that Impostor syndrome is an unconscious expression of our, perfectly rational, fear of failure.
Its rational because failure sucks. Being the root cause of that failure sucks more. Nobody wants to sit in the corner and wear the dunce hat. As a founder you have probably realized that the buck stops with you. It is an awesome responsibility. Your customers, staff, suppliers and family are relying on you to get things right.
When things go wrong, everyone will look to (and at) you. The dunce hat beckons. It is scary. How do you deal with this fear?
I’m not a mental health professional so I can only share what has worked for me in the past. This is what I shared with my fellow founder:
I accept that I am scared.
I do not try to run away from this. I need to accept and validate that I am feeling this way and accept the discomfort. I have tried in the past to ignore, power through or discount the feeling but it didn’t help me. It isn’t weak to accept that I feel fear. Paradoxically, true courage only exists when there is fear.
I realize that I am not alone.
It has been an exceptionally powerful realization for me to understand and internalize that hey, this is part of the journey. Its normal. There are other people (most?) feeling this way and I’m not weird, wired differently or an outlier here. It might be darkly self interested but I prefer to hang with a bunch of other people than to hang separately.
I write down what I’m scared of.
There’s a great book that talks about “fearsetting” and I’ll admit to never having heard the term before about 2010 but its a great term. I list what I’m scared of, what can go wrong and critically; What I’m doing about it. I try to give myself a measure of control over my fear.
I remind myself why I’m doing this.
I don’t know about you but I’m bullish about my startup. I think I’m creating something cool, valuable and worth my time. I’m also on a journey that not everyone gets to take. It doesn’t matter who I am, where I learned, what my background is. What matters is what I create and whether it is good enough for other people to see value.
I remind myself that I can do this.
I’ve shark dived. Bungee jumped. Skydived. Faced down exploding child poop (If you’re a parent you’ll understand) and lived to tell the tale. I even watched “Roman J. Israel esq” to the end darnit. I can do this.
Everyone has had to face adversity. Reminding myself of what I’ve faced is a good way to internalize that failure won’t kill me. It may be uncomfortable, it may suck but I’ll survive. I might even learn something.
And then I go out and do something.
I do the next small thing that will get me to the end of this journey. I don’t pick the biggest because I need a small win for right now. Eventually that’s how I build success. A small win at a time.
