When awful things happen, the well of courage you keep for yourself becomes the most important quality you possess. That’s a lesson I won’t soon forget.

Being a startup founder is probably the toughest decision I’ve ever made. Mostly because I have never thought of it as a decision at all but more a choice-less calling that this period of my life has forced me into answering.

Some founders find a problem to fix, a market solution or are spurred on by the aspiration of wealth and success. It has never been like that for me. I founded Storygami with my co-founder Heidi because, I guess, I couldn’t not build a company to create what I wanted in the world.

I can be awfully pompous. Arrogant and self-delusional about my ever so special, certain abilities. I’ve always been a terrible employee because of it and always hated having a boss. I’m just no good at being told what to do.

Now, self-confidence is absolutely requisite in running a startup. It’s almost the first line of defence, an armour plate, thickened skin. Any attempt to explain such fierce confidence in whatever we do as founders will inevitably sound overblown or delusional.

Nevertheless, I’ll try:

I do this because to do anything else either hurts or doesn’t hurt enough. Physically, psychologically, weirdly spiritually — I can’t see anyone else do this the way I — and by extension the company — do as well as we do. Storygami for me, is a company built on a violent fervour, a pig headed kind of stubbornness, a chemical in my bloodstream.

That’s as plain as I can make it.

The thing is, it works both ways. When you’re wrapped up so tight, so hard, so completely, in what it is you’re doing everyday as a founder, awful things become manifestations of all your fears. It’s all too easy to drown in self-doubt.

That’s when the well of courage simply needs to be there, stocked up in barrels for when you need it. Courage is a mixture of a lot things. It all bleeds in and out of a sense of self-worth, experience and simple fear. Fear extends into courage, it’s right there in your response to what scares you. The confidence you’ve been ratcheting up is just the buffer.

Disappointment, Criticism, Set-backs, Loss, Catastrophe, Heartbreak — that’s where you find Courage.

Truth is, I wouldn’t have known whether I was a coward or not if I hadn’t experienced any of the above. You just never know unless you face the bare cold. I’m a better founder and a better person for it.

Personally for me, courage lies inward. It comes in the form of the best version of myself demanding the almost impossible. I expect a high standard of myself. Now, sometimes I rise to the challenge, sometimes I don’t but I always fight. I fight because I wouldn’t want anyone else to do it on my behalf. Especially not for what matters most: the work.

Founders are lonely fidgets. Impatient and difficult. We are not regular people and so shouldn’t expect our paths to be as comfortable as others.

The passion we bring to our work as founders can be a gift or a curse. It all depends on our response to when bad shit happens. If we don’t remain stoic every step of the way it’s unlikely we’ll ever survive to see our work realised.

If our work as founders is worth anything, anything at all, then what we’re doing is too important not to hurt.

That’s the deal. You want it that bad, you find the courage, you fight.