Читать книгу The Resilient Founder. Lessons in Endurance from Startup Entrepreneurs онлайн

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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.

To start a book with a founder's suicide is no way to start a book. It's dark, gloomy and only exacerbates the downward spiral. Yet the conventional norms of burying the difficult emotions, pretending such challenges do not exist, need to be dismantled. In bringing the challenge to the forefront, we can allow the discomfort to rise. And then settle down. We can allow the emotion to surge, even for a few moments. And we can begin to talk about the topics we should no longer be hiding from, because when we open ourselves up, we give each one another permission to bring forth the uncomfortable turmoil. And when we allow these frustrations to vent away, it might help, heal, or even save a life.