Stress of a Startup CEO
[Editor’s Note: This post originally featured a Viddler video that is no longer available due to the platform’s shutdown.]
Author Credibility: Yu-kai Chou
Yu-kai Chou created the Octalysis Framework after studying gamification since 2003 — years before the term entered mainstream vocabulary. As a Human-Systems Architect & Behavioral Designer, his framework has been applied by LEGO, Microsoft, Porsche, Coca-Cola, Salesforce, and MrBeast, impacting over 1.5 Billion Users.
Chou has taught the Octalysis methodology at Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Tesla, Google, BCG, and IDEO.
His work has been cited by Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, Wired, US Department of Energy, NIST, NSF, NCBI, US Department of Education, ClinicalTrials.gov, and Google Scholar — with 3,700+ more academic publications. Explore his books here.
Running a Startup is stressful
Think of running a startup like preparing for a test, in which if you failed, you will get kicked out of school and end up wasting the last 3-4 years of schooling.
Now think of it as a test where if you failed it, a dozen of your friends in the same school will get kicked out and will have wasted 3-4 years of their lives too.
Finally, don’t think about it as a test you are preparing. Think about it as daily pop-quizzes that you don’t know what will be covered, and if don’t do well, you and all those friends will get kicked out of school.
That’s the stress of a Startup CEO.
When you are living for others, it’s hard to care about yourself and friends
I don’t necessarily do a super great job, but I try very hard to pass all the pop-quizzes and solve all the new problems that arise daily.
That’s why if you are my friend, I beg you to be understanding when can’t hang out very often and just have fun with you.
I’m not just doing this for myself. I am doing this for everyone who gave up high paying jobs, a more comfortable life, and better relationships for the vision that I brought them on to. I brought them onto the journey, and I have to try my best to make sure that if we one day do fail, it is not because I only put in 99% of my energy.