Читать книгу The Resilient Founder - Mahendra Ramsinghani - Страница 31

The siren call of suicide is not exclusively restricted to those who have suffered setbacks or failure. Successful founders have often struggled with a sense of loss after the victory lap has been completed. An investor I knew really well committed suicide. He was a great friend, someone I would call as often as three times a week. We talked often, bantered, had fun, and had co-invested in dozens of companies. We spent time together on the cap-table as well as the dinner table. When in town, he would often stay with me. He was a part of mia familia yet I was clueless about his mental anguish. To this day, I wonder why he committed suicide, when he had made his millions.

In his self-view, he may have lost his motivation, facing some inner hurdles. In his worldview, maybe there was no further joy, contentment, or challenges. Successful founders often experience a feeling of emptiness, a void.

L'appel du vide

This French phrase roughly translates to “the call of the void” – that strange fleeting urge to jump when standing atop high buildings, peaks. When you get up to the higher levels of the Eiffel Tower, some might get the call of the void. They have nets all over to prevent people from jumping, and for most, this fleeting urge passes in seconds.

Such a call of the void often comes after those millions have been banked. The lack of an ongoing challenge, no monsters to wrestle with, puts an energetic founder in a state of helpless despair. There are no problems to solve anymore, what should I do with myself? Maybe create a new start-up? And thus we stay trapped on the treadmill.

Irvin Yalom, author and therapist in Silicon Valley, writes that “the success of young high-tech millionaires generates a life crisis that can be instructive about non-self-transcendent life-meaning systems.” In other words, the millionaires are stuck with “What next?” Making the millions did not transcend their own selves. They start new companies, try to repeat their success. Why? They tell themselves they must prove it was no fluke, that they can do it alone, without a particular investor, partner, or mentor. They raise the bar. They no longer need 1 or 2 million in the bank – they need 5, 10, even 50 million to feel secure. They realize the pointlessness and irrationality in earning more money when they already have more than they can possibly spend, but this does not stop them. They realize they are taking away time from their families, from things closer to the heart, but they just cannot give up playing the game. “The money is just lying out there,” they tell themselves. “All I have to do is pick it up.”

A successful entrepreneur who made a ton of money or a failed one who did not make any both ended up at the same juncture.

Money, fame, and success are not necessarily an antidote for our inner chaos.