Hi @jamesgill , great to hear from you! I’ve always enjoyed our chats over the years and I remember coming to visit you way back before I had a team and being in awe of what you and your team had built at GoSquared. Thanks for the question, I’d love to catch up soon!
This is something I certainly struggled with in the past
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It’s easy to get into a downward spiral if you read the tech press or the humblebrags from founders of unicorns or the next new hotness
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This sort of thinking can also impact team morale and has literally no upside
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It seems rooted in that destructive human tendency to compare yourself with those around you
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Comparing ourselves to others (esp carefully crafted PR messages) makes it easy to minimise your achievements and forget what’s important to you
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But there’s a pretty simple antidote that works well for me when I start to feel like this. Being grateful:
a) Remembering why I started this in the first place, using that as my touchstone,
b) Focusing only on the things that matter, and
c) Acknowledging and embracing that I’m exceptionally fortunate to be in this position -
I started Geckoboard because
a) I believed this product wanted/needed to exist, and
b) I wanted to work in an environment that I felt was both positive and productive -
By keeping those at the top of my priority list and hiring people with similar values then the tendency to to look outward and compare ourselves to others diminishes
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The team and I really do care about how we work with each other and really care about the problem domain and believe in our approach
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These are hard but incredibly rewarding challenges to work on, anything else is a distraction
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If either of those things change in the future, then that might be the time to reassess, but as long as they remain true, then reminding myself of how lucky I am to be working on something I care about with people I care about is ample
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It also helps that every hyper-successful founder I’ve spoken to privately about this is happy to acknowledge that this is just a cost of doing business regardless of size your business or how fast it’s growing
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Things are always messy and chaotic even if it doesn’t look like that from the outside
That said, I’d be very interested in hearing your tips for dealing with this, fellow old-timer! 