A year ago, after closing my first startup, I attended one of those conferences that you\u2019re supposed to attend. There were a lot of old friends there, folks who I hadn\u2019t seen in a while, and there was the usual collection of panels and panelists, Power Points and Pellegrino. As I stood in a sun-full room clutching a coffee someone asked me about my first startup.<\/p>\n
The reaction was swift. First I felt the old gut churning, the fear. It was like bringing up the name of a family member who had recently died, like raising old ghosts. I started to talk \u2013 \u201cWe just were too early, it was a good experience\u201d \u2013 but then it got harder and harder. A failure is a blow. It\u2019s a pop to the nose, tears welling up not out of sadness but out of surprise and anger and disappointment. Disappointment in yourself, in your choices, in your inability to stick to it. A feeling that you should have done better. A feeling that you rarely get as an adult in a cubicle, sitting and waiting for the next paycheck. It\u2019s a feeling that I knew I needed to feel but it was also a feeling that hurt to the core.<\/p>\n
This isn\u2019t a post about crying at a tech conference. That happened and it was at once embarrassing and enlightening. It\u2019s a post about one or two things you\u2019ll feel when you build and how to cope.<\/p>\n
The brogrammer will say that you\u2019re not ready to be an entrepreneur if you can\u2019t handle this shit. He\u2019s wrong and he\u2019ll get his soon enough. This is a human activity more akin to art than science. Any art that doesn\u2019t make you feel something is a waste of your time.<\/p>\n
So when you embark on this remember that what you\u2019re feeling is perfectly normal and perfectly dreadful. First, listen to your body. When we were raising funds in New York and the Valley I\u2019d wake up in a panic. I\u2019d wake up not wanting to work. For the first time in my career I didn\u2019t want to go to my computer and get started. I was gaining weight. My guts were broken. The fear was palpable.<\/p>\n
I tried to fix things through work but, and this is something I took with me to my new startup, Jaywalk<\/a>, I found that what I needed was to walk or run. I needed to get out. Some kind of movement tended to calm me gave me a moment to solve my problems. One particularly rough day I walked 80 blocks through my neighborhood, from down near Green-Wood Cemetery to Downtown Brooklyn. It felt good to be out. I started running four times a week recently and I feel much better. I learned from my friend Rich that walking releases endorphins and helps the body heal itself.<\/p>\n