As acclaimed investor and entrepreneur Ben Horowitz once stated, managing your own psychology is the hardest skill for any founder or CEO. In The Resilient Founder: Lessons in Endurance from Startup Entrepreneurs, Mahendra Ramsinghani gathers insights from over a hundred founders to deliver an intuitive and insightful guide to understanding our psychology and navigating the psychological pressures of startup leadership.
Venture backed companies are expected to grow at high velocity, raise large amounts of capital, build teams effectively to achieve unicorn, no decacorn status. Yet the journey is long, filled with uncertainties, extremities and black swan events. It can wear out the best and the brightest. On the outside, a CEO can demonstrate sheer bravado, an invincible spirit as they behead dragons in the business battlefield. And on the inside, they deal with their dark side, subconscious struggles, emotional barriers, shame or guilt. The role of a founder can be lonely, frustrating and filled with high-highs and low-lows - all of this leading to anxiety, depression even suicide.
This book addresses the fundamentals of understanding our own inner workings and explores practical ways of overcoming our inner hurdles. Filled with simple, yet concrete strategies, lessons and insights, founders and business leaders can work with stress, anxiety, and other mental challenges presented by the life of an entrepreneur.
In this book, readers will learn to: - Understand the basics of founder psychology, and how our inner workings can help or hurt us - The importance of building a healthy ego, leading to resilience - Draw on the lessons of established startup leaders on how to wrestle with their own mental and emotional challenges
Written for founders, entrepreneurs and Chief Executive Officers, The Resilient Founder leads a gentle path to self-awareness, compassionate soul-care and inner wellbeing. Entrepreneur, Investor and author Brad Feld calls this book "dynamite". Case studies, philosophical perspectives and a generous dose of poetry is sprinkled across this book, which can be a companion for all those misfits, rebels and the crazy ones. For all those perpetually hitched on the roller coaster ride of entrepreneurial journey, this book is first of a kind to delve into the dark side and present a balanced approach to building your inner core as you build your company. This is no quick-fix guide, and we are perpetual work-in-progress. Today is Day One. Let us start the journey.
Table of Contents
Foreword xi
Acknowledgments xv
About the Cover xvii
A Note to Readers xix
Introduction-The Despondent Founder 1
Part I Running to a Standstill 9
1 When Suicide Seems Like a Good Option 11
2 Stepping Back from the Edge 29
3 How External Events Trigger Negative Feelings 39
4 Obstacles and Frustrations 47
Part II Understanding Our Psychology 55
5 Building Our Psychological Quotient 57
6 Ethics 65
7 Do the Right Thing 71
8 Ego - The Emperor and the Slave 79
9 Working with Your Ego 87
10 The Hidden Land of Desires and Motivations 93
11 Logos and the Mind 105
12 Pathos: Belief Systems 117
13 Putting It All Together 123
Part III Reassembling the Furniture 127
14 Toward Building a Healthy Ego 129
15 Psychotherapy: An Imperfect History of an Impossible Profession 143
16 Fearing Our Own Selves … and Other Mental Blocks 149
17 Stages of Therapy 159
18 Challenges and Pitfalls in Therapy 165
19 Medicating Our Way to Recovery 173
Part IV These Rituals Worked for Us 183
20 A Soul Made Cheerful 185
21 Prescription 1 - An Organized Diminution of Work 193
22 Prescription 2 - Get Out of Your Head 199
23 Prescription 3 - Feeling, Not Thinking 209
24 Prescription 4 - Spirit over Mind 217
25 Prescription 5 - A Promise to Yourself 233
26 The Elements of a Good Life 239
Postscript: How to Care for the Broken and the Depressed 245
Appendix I: A Founder’s Mental Health Manifesto 261
Appendix II: Founders’ Voices and Anonymized Surveys 263
Notes 265
About the Author 271
About the Website 273
Index 275
