Читать книгу The Resilient Founder - Mahendra Ramsinghani - Страница 24

A few years ago, a founder, who I'll call Mark, committed suicide. Mark had given up, was done, could not solve for anything anymore. His inner resources exhausted and spent, the range of problems he perceived were all massive, impossible. For Mark, the best option, in fact the only option was to end it all.

Mark was building a company that could have changed the way we design and develop medicine. To say that he was driven and passionate would be an understatement. He had raised money from some of the leading investors in Silicon Valley. As an investor in the company's seed round, I saw his fierce intensity up close.

Working 24/7, his entire life was entwined in his start-up, the milestone, the next financing round, the next step function of value creation. His identity and that of the company were fused as one. The company's success was Mark's success. The mantra of his start-up life was quemar los barcos – burn those goddam boats. No going back. All in. No plan B, no safety net. Those are for the weaklings. All of this was music to the investors' ears. Money flowed quickly. Mark had courage, conviction, energy, enthusiasm, and technical acumen – all the founder attributes revered in the business and technical circles. When he stood up to present his ideas, audience members would nod in agreement of a brave new world — reverently, silently. In hushed tones, they would exchange delighted notes that Mark was on to something big, groundbreaking. By any standards, here was a guy, TheGuy, who was well on his way to make a dent in the world.

And then one day, Mark was gone. The candle snuffed out, just like that.

We just saw one side, the bold and brazen exterior, the showman, while on the inside, the picture was vastly different. He was broken. Tired. Some evenings, when he would go visit his parents, he would just sit on the couch, for long periods of time, silently staring into the void. Overworked and exhausted, he would ask to just be left alone. He did not want to talk to anyone, nor go for a walk, watch a show, or read a book. He just wanted to decompress. The Silicon Valley cheerleaders had egged him on with generous superlatives like man, you're crushing it. But the chasm between his self-view, his abilities, and the scale of problems kept widening. He got crushed instead.