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ISBN 9781119839736 (Hardback)
ISBN 9781119839750 (ePDF)
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In memory of minds afire
Austen Heinz, Aaron Swartz, Jody ShermanSreeram Veerangandham,and many more …
This book is dedicated tothat indomitable spirit in every founderthat respects the darknessand brings lightfor a better future for all.
A book should serve as the axe for the frozen sea within us.— Franz Kafka
Foreword
Brad Feld
I had my first major depressive episode as an adult in 1990. At the time, I was running my first company, Feld Technologies, which was going well. However, my work on a PhD program at MIT was not, and I dropped out of the program. At the same time, my first marriage imploded for various reasons, including my extreme focus on work. And, while Feld Technologies was succeeding, I was exhausted and bored with the actual work.
My experience of depression is the complete absence of joy. I'm functional and can do my work, but it takes all of my energy to get out of bed, get out of the house, make it through eight hours, and get back home. In the evenings, I don't have an interest in anything – food, reading, TV, sex, or exercise. Instead, I sit in the bathtub or lie in bed and stare at the ceiling, eventually falling asleep.
This depressive episode lasted two years. I did therapy and was fortunate to have an excellent psychiatrist. I took medication, learned better how to take care of myself, and had several beneficial close relationships, including those with my business partner (Dave Jilk) and my new girlfriend and now wife (Amy Batchelor). However, I was deeply ashamed of being depressed, of doing therapy, and for taking medication. This stigma weighed on me, some days even more than the depression.
While attending the Consumer Electronics Show in January 2013, I found myself in a dark Las Vegas hotel room, covering my head with a pillow, utterly uninterested in dealing with anything.
It was the start of a major depressive episode that lasted almost six months.
It appeared that my life was great. Foundry Group, the company I started in 2007, was doing well, and my marriage this time was solid and happy. But as I figured out later, I was physiologically and psychologically exhausted due to an utter lack of self-care, which triggered the episode. I'd been clinically depressed before and recognized the symptoms. I knew that it eventually would pass, but I didn't know when or what would bring relief.
This time I didn't feel any stigma. I'd been open about my past struggles with depression. Through my blog, I'd written a little about it and talked at many events about it. I'd worked with other entrepreneurs who had been depressed and had learned a lot about what did and didn't help. This time, I decided to be open about my depression as it was unfolding and dig deeper into the dynamics around depression.
That same January, two well-known entrepreneurs, Jody Sherman and Aaron Swartz, committed suicide. By May, my depression had lifted. After coming out of my depressive episode, I decided that one of my goals over the rest of my life would be to help eliminate the stigma surrounding mental health, especially in entrepreneurship. With friends like Jerry Colonna and Dave Morin also committed to this topic, I've addressed the stigma, and many other issues, surrounding depression and mental health.
In 2018, shortly after the suicides of Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain, I received an email from Mahendra Ramsinghani. We had been friends for more than five years and co-authors of a book entitled Startup Boards: Getting the Most Out of Your Board of Directors. Mahendra told me that he was starting to work on his third book (this one), to be The Resilient Founder. While there were some blog posts, video interviews, and articles in major magazines around entrepreneurship and mental health, no one had yet taken on the topic in book form.
I immediately agreed to help, both get the word out and to write this Foreword whenever Mahendra was ready. A survey on my blog netted over 100 interviews for Mahendra with founders who were willing to talk about their depressive experiences. Periodically, Mahendra would reach out to me for advice around a topic or a connection to another entrepreneur who was visibly struggling with depression.
Since then conversations around depression, mental health, and suicide have escalated in a generally constructive way. More people talk openly about depression, especially among highly creative and successful people, including Olympic athletes. While the stigma around depression and other mental health issues in our society is still highly significant, the leadership from an increasing number of visible people around their struggles is starting to make a dent in that stigma.
After reading the near-final draft of this book, I sent Mahendra a quick email saying, “Your book is dynamite.” When he set out to write the book, he told me his goal was to write a book that provides stories, anecdotes, triggers, advice, poetry, and support of all kinds from people who have struggled with depression. He accomplished this, and much more, as he deeply explored many aspects of a high-achieving personality, which includes entrepreneurs, and deconstructed many of the challenges that can lead to or amplify existing mental health issues.
In my most recent book, The Entrepreneur's Weekly Nietzsche: A Book for Disruptors, written with Dave Jilk, my first business partner mentioned earlier, one of the Nietzsche quotes we explore directly applies. In the chapter “Reflecting Your Light,”
