I agree on this. When you have big businesses commercially incentivised to promote addictive behaviour it's going to be hard to change the collective behaviour and its potentially harmful impact
As we all know, everyone "doing a startup" is "killing it" or "smashing it", or "crushing it".
Yet what we all really know, is that nobody ever really is and working life in general can be really fucking hard and has a huge impact on your mental health.
My startup (@SanctusLDN) has produced a podcast with Spotify called "Killing it" that shares real stories from people in startups that are being open and honest about their mental health journey.
The first episode is legendary Alex Depledge who sold Hassle for £24m, but this podcast doesn't talk about that - it talks about her human journey and her mental health.
I would say this, but it's really valuable and well worth a listen.
Hey everyone, it's been a while since I've posted in here ️
I've had a blog post brewing for a while that I've been desperate to share with this community in particular.
I believe too many people are "doing a startup" for a quick win to be successful and happy. It's what I did with my last company.
I see so many founders raising VC and angel money for businesses that would probably just be amazing organic businesses.
I just wanted to share with you what we're doing with Sanctus, why we're happy that we're building a sustainable business that has no intention to sell or raise VC and why playing "the long game" has transformed my world-view on business.
It feels like there is a band of people who are starting to focus on building awesome 'lifestyle' businesses or just bootstrapping and actually making money from day one.
I hope this post can start what I think is a well-needed discussion
Hey Guys - I've written a new post which might cause some healthy debate
If you've ever been to a startup drinks/networking event, pitch or demo day - you'll know only too well that absolutely everyone is "killing it" or "crushing it" (maybe even "smashing it")..
Yet, we all know that building a startup just isn't like that and I think this culture where everybody claims to be doing really well and "fine" and "ok" is not only disingenuous, but bad for your Mental Health.
hmm not sure I agree on the age or life experience point. In my case yeah, we were a bad bet, but not because of our age.
I wish investors would stop putting money into businesses solving no real problem/with no real vision.
Also disagree on the human cost point, yes it may have cost a lot of money, but I'm certain the value the team and I will go on to create will far exceed the money we raised.
You clearly haven't read any of my other posts. Dealing with failure is the hardest thing I've ever done and seriously affected my mental health. Everyone who worked for us went into better jobs than previously and all I'm doing is trying to help more and more people. You are far too quick to judge and seem very bitter about a lot of the startup BS, which I can understand.
When I talk about the fact that the business could have been seen as a success for me, that is because success and failure are completely relative. Many of the people around me would laugh when I said I'd failed, because they were judging it by how far I'd come and the experience I'd gained.
You're absolutely right the business was a complete failure and we spent $800k of someone else's money to get those learnings', but just because someone was a founder/CEO you shouldn't think they're in a different position to anybody else - both financially and emotionally.
Hi Everyone,
Following on from the writing I've been doing on mental health in startups - I've decided to create a facebook page dedicated to the topic too.
The aim is to provide a place to share public and anonymous stories from people going through the same issues. I'm hoping this goes some way to raising awareness on mental health and removing the stigma.
Great comment - thanks for sharing. I think I agree - it's not just about the environment you work in (although I think certain environments bring it out more), it's a certain type of personality/mindset maybe.