Beyond Envy: A Founder's Journey from Dreams to Wisdom
No founder can easily escape the entrepreneur's dark days.
No one in the sway of envy or jealousy has a chance to think clearly or live peacefully. How can they? It is an endless loop of misery. We’re envious of one person, while they envy somebody else. — Ryan Holiday, Stillness Is The Key
When I had my first startup, I'd see another neighboring gaming startup raise a $5m round and feel gutted because I didn't have the venture capital cash that they did. The primary feeling was unfairness, and I blamed the people who did not believe in me.
I've done many webinars and newsletter articles on what's "going on inside the VC brain" to remove this stigma of unfairness of why you can't raise and the others can.
To summarize, it's not about the investor not believing in you and your company; it's about the investor treating your business as much riskier than the other.
With any startup, even the best ones, nothing is without risk. However, your business might have a lot more risk stacked because of a long list of risks that might cause the company never to become successful, whereas the other might have a 50% to 70% higher chance of success just because of derisking.
Even when you know the risks you face and understand how VCs think, it will still feel unfair, and you will keep wanting what the other one has.
Here's another way of looking at this. I recently listened to a Tim Ferriss podcast episode in which Tim interviewed Derek Sivers, author of several books on everyday philosophy. Derek brought up the question that he often gets asked: "What would you tell your younger self as advice?"
Derek: When people ask the question, what would you tell your younger self? What's the real question there? I, unfortunately, have taken that question literally too often.
Tim: But they're really asking, what advice would you give someone who is not where you are but who wants to be where you are? And my answer is: You get the highlights reel, but you need to get the full picture.
The founders who raised $5m had already walked a different path for years. They had started at a different point in time to do things that contributed to them raising the five million.
There's one Naval Ravikant quote that I often think about:
One day, I realized with all these people I was jealous of, I couldn’t just choose little aspects of their life. I couldn’t say I want his body, I want her money, I want his personality. You have to be that person. Do you want to actually be that person with all of their reactions, their desires, their family, their happiness level, their outlook on life, their self-image? If you’re not willing to do a wholesale, 24/7, 100 percent swap with who that person is, then there is no point in being jealous.
What is the counter to envy? Humility.
Jon Radoff put it well on my podcast:
The game industry will teach you humility. And if you don't have humility, when you start building games, you will eventually have humility. It's only a matter of time before you find out that your brilliant idea just doesn't resonate with a large enough audience to become commercially viable.
I remember talking to one founder who had spent the last four years building their startup, which eventually failed. They were full of grief about not having anything coming out of the company. It all went to zero, he said. My reaction was to think the opposite; they had just spent four years at the "University of Startups," having first-hand experience in building a company, raising funding, making the product, talking to customers, and making an effort.
The way you can come out of it with everything going to zero is if you don't spend time learning. In this video, YC founder Paul Graham argues that there is no such thing as becoming better at startups. It’s a really good watch.
I agree with Paul. Many founders I've seen spend their runway obsessing over product and showing new builds to investors and advisors. Many startups take ages to expose their products to users. When doing that, they often try to understand their customers through mere metrics dashboards.
It's got a lot to do with going out of your comfort zone. You can be the best coder in the world at building beautiful games without the slightest idea if anyone will want to use your product.
I have this saying: Most startups don't die because they run out of cash; they die because the founder gives up. But it could also be that they never had a customer.
Final words
In my 20s and 30s, I had a vision of what a successful entrepreneur looked like. They'd made a ton of money (million), which would signal they'd made it. After my burnout in early 2019, my perception changed. Being an entrepreneur is so much more than "making it" financially.
What had changed? I knew I had accumulated so much knowledge that I could put to good use with Elite Game Developers and eventually start the F4 Fund with David Kaye. I had seen that being a content creator could be a profession that could eventually lead to more opportunities (like investing), so it felt like the next zag in my path of zig and zag.
This is what it is for me nowadays:
I spend time with the people I most relate to. If you are working on a startup, find people who relate to what you are building. If you want to be a content creator, surround yourself with other content creators.
Working on things that will improve things. Developing a growth mindset will take any entrepreneur to new heights. The second priority is self-care, an integral part of sustained success.
Financial rewards are a side product of the above two, plus compounding. If you are working on something that matters to people and can keep working on it, the compounding will level you up.
To end this piece, I want to double-click on the third one to bring up a quote from Morgan Housel, the author of Psychology of Money and Same as Ever, which illustrates how compounding works.
Compounding only works if you can give an asset years and years to grow. It's like planting oak trees: A year of growth will never show much progress; ten years can make a meaningful difference, and 50 years can create something absolutely extraordinary. $81.5 billion of Warren Buffett's $84.5 billion net worth came after his 65th birthday. Our minds are not built to handle such absurdities.