Punching Bag

Lex Fridman has had recently a very interesting conversation with Marc Andreessen. Marc is the co-creator of Mosaic, co-founder of Netscape, and co-founder of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. They covered a galaxy of topics, as is typically the case of every Lex Fridman podcast. which is unusually long format (3-4 hours each episode).

There is an interesting discussion at around 2 hours 44 minutes mark - on startups. Great founders don't take any advice. Then on top of intelligence/passion traits there is the courage element which is the choice. The question of pain tolerance - "how many times are you willing to get punched in the face before you quit?". Marc goes on saying the biggest thing people don't understand about what it's like to be a startup founder is it gets very romanticized. And even if they fail it still gets romanticized about what a great adventure it was. But the reality of it it is most of what happens is people telling you "no" and then they usually follow on that with you're stupid. No, I'm not going to work for you, no I'm not going to buy your product, no I'm not going to run a story about your company. So the founders just must get used to just getting punched. At the same time founders cannot let on that this is happening, because it will cause people to think that the founder is weak and they will lose faith in her/him. So founders must pretend they are having a great time, while dying inside. Looking like a boxer while in reality you are a punching bag.

It all sounds so familiar to me. And one day I will probably be ready to tell the naked truth. But now, for the people around not to lose faith, I keep pretending of having a great time and being a boxer. I mean it is a great time, sort of, but there is this element of "dying inside" that surfaces so often. Of course after a year or 5 or 10 of doing that you somehow get used to being frequently punched and it even gets the normal part of the game. As a punching bag, the more resilient you are and the sooner you are able to shake off and stand up to get punched again, the better punching bag you are.