Its no secret, entrepreneurship can be an arduous journey. I know this because I have lived it, quitting my job in 2017 to get into the startup world. When I look back at the last few years of my life, consider the sacrifices I’ve made and the hard work I’ve put in to entrepreneurship, its hard to not get crestfallen with the outcome.
I’m turning 34 tomorrow and other than a number of unsuccessful startups, I have nothing to show for my years. That’s the difficult side of choosing to walk the entrepreneurship path. You can work yourself to the bone but there is never any guarantee that you will succeed. With over 90% of startups failing, the odds that yours will fall outside this cohort are quite low. Its not too bad when it happens the first time, but suffering a string of such failures does affect even the strongest minds.
The mental health aspects of pursuing the startup dream are rarely talked about in popular media. Most of the stories you read in the news are of the widely successful entrepreneurs. Every morning when I check my news feed, there is always an article from TechCrunch of some startup closing a new round of funding, acquired for millions or planning a huge exit via IPO. I’ll see multiple articles of startups that went parabolic and grew tremendously in size and value over the course of just a few years. This kind of news does motivate new entrepreneurs, but it also creates an illusory perception that is quite different from reality.
The truth is, failure in startups is more common than success. It is also something that most people are rarely prepared to handle, given the skew in media reporting. What is made out to look all glitzy does have a dark side too, the psychological price paid by the those who don’t make the cut. These stories are not told as often as they should be, and as a result, few ever prepare themselves for dealing with such outcomes. This is ironic given the statistics for startups failure, but information bias is a potent force and it does influence how we perceive reality.
It can be quite disheartening to work so hard at something yet fail to see it take off in the way you had hoped. This is especially so for a bootstrapped startup since it leaves the founders financially wiped out. The combined stresses of the startup not working out and financial challenges can affect founders in profound ways. With little reference for how others have handled such challenges in their own lives, it is easy for an entrepreneur to find themselves sliding into depression.
Feelings of hopelessness and defeat can weigh the mind down. I should know as this is a path I have tread myself. When you know that you’ve given it your best, but it still wasn’t enough, this can play havoc with your self esteem. When you’ve exhausted your runway and can’t pay the bills to keep the startup running, facing imminent closure, anxiety can creep up on you. It can be incredibly lonely as a startup founder, and quite often one finds themselves lost in a sea of thoughts. It can get especially bad if there is no one to talk to.
I have walked down that lonely road. It is a path where it is easy to lose faith, in yourself and everything around you. You question your choices, you rue your decisions, you become dejected. You look back and try to figure out what you could have done different, trying to identify when it was that the rain started beating you. However all of this contemplation only drives you deeper into the abyss of melancholy, sapping away your last strands of mental energy. Leaving you stranded in the black hole of despair.
Most people getting into entrepreneurship rarely ever prepare for this outcome. Nobody trains you how to overcome these obstacles and stay strong in the face of adversity. I have found that these are all skills that you need to develop as your experience the joys and pain of entrepreneurship. Much like learning to fly when already up in the air, you’ll either prevail and find your inner strength, or crash and burn to a crisp. There is no school to learn any of these things, and as an entrepreneur you can only hope that you’ll find the light at the end of the tunnel once you jump in.
Ultimately, when you choose to become an entrepreneur, be alive to the fact that you are choosing a full package. One that has both merits and demerits. If you were to ask me if it is worth it going down this road, I’d tell you that it depends. Depends on your mental strength and how much you can persevere before breaking. It is a gamble, and you can never know at the outset how things will turn out. You can only try, give it your best and if you fail, try again. In all this, you need to find yourself and stay sane.
Someone once said success is built on a string of failures. We need to normalize talking about the failures just as much as we do the successes. Startups can be tough, and those of us who struggle against inter-sectional barriers have it rougher than the general population. However, it is in this crucible of adversity that resilience is forged. Those who don’t break today retain the hope of breaking through tomorrow.
Personally, I’ve taken a beating but I am not yet at the point of giving up. I refuse to quit because I may yet succeed tomorrow. Maybe my vindication is at hand, if only I can push forward a little further. I can only hold out hope that my mental reserves do not run out before I have achieved my aspirations.
