The Making of a Founder
On conviction and the hero’s journey
When you rewind back to the starting point, be honest: you thought it would be easy enough.
You conjured an image of yourself making — nay willing — something important into existence. What?
A one-way ticket to immortalized greatness?
A thrilling adventure to fill the pages of your own personal hero’s journal?
A bank account fat enough to guarantee you security for the rest of your days?
Whether you sought to change the world or change your fortunes, you believed it possible. You had the magic of conviction.
The first few months fly by like a convertible under California sky. Brilliant ideas slip into your mind effortlessly as sunsets. It all feels so fresh, so free, so possible. This is the honeymoon period, where your story bursts of sweet, juicy promise. You share it with hungry seekers who sign on to your team. You serve it up to those with fat purses as they wave money in your direction.
You live in the future, which is to say you live in a dream. Everything feels as airy as cotton candy.
But of course, reality comes knocking.
Reality is patient; it knows you’ll eventually open the door. Reality is also a tempest. When you finally step through, you’ll find yourself in the arena where your conviction faces off against an onslaught of fearsome creatures: Rejection, Failure, Disappointment, Comparison, Opportunity Cost, Chaos.
Each beast charges towards your conviction. At first they are easily swatted aside. Your energy is electric and you are ready for these early setbacks. After all, you expected challenges on your quest. A smooth path would be boring.
But the attacks are relentless. Week after week, new crises emerge. Things always take longer than you expect. The situation is always more complex than you initially thought. Your idea is never as good in execution as on paper.
Soon, you find yourself winded and even a little bit wounded. Certain rejections have sunk their teeth into your conviction and torn out great chunks. As belief whittles away, dark questions descend like vultures:
- Am I as capable as I thought?
- Is the dream still possible?
- Do I still want this, knowing what it’ll cost?
This is the founder’s real battle: reality against conviction. The only true death of a start-up is the death of conviction.
You can lose customers, lose colleagues, lose co-founders, lose all your money. There are founders who have faced these and more, only to ascend to ever greater heights. As Ben Horowitz says, “There is always a move.” But do you still care to make that move?
No single setback is a killing blow; but it may well be the straw that breaks your conviction’s back.
In the making of any successful founder, this much can be said: through the daily clash of dreams against reality, she kept the fires of conviction alive.
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Where does conviction come from?
There are three founts whence conviction springs:
1. Conviction in where the world is going
Like the oracle at Delphi, you’re blessed with clarity of foresight. You can see that which is inevitable. Your ears hear how history rhymes, your heart thumps to the sinusoidal rhythms of history. The tectonic plates of culture collide in predictable ways, and you can tell where we’re going even if you don’t know exactly when we’ll get there. You see what the world needs and why long before everyone else wakes up to it.
This is conviction in a market, conviction in customer needs, conviction in human nature, conviction in the steady arc of destiny.
2. Conviction in the self
Like Hercules, so confident in his strength that he took on his Twelve Labors with a sense of inevitable success, you too know your shit. Everything in your life has led you to the precipice of this next grand challenge. You have lived and breathed the problem; you have peered into its dark cavities from a thousand different angles. You know your domain cold; you were born to do this.
This is conviction in one’s skills, conviction in unique knowledge, conviction in the intelligence and strength and force of will that lies within.
3. Conviction in the process
Like Odysseus and Penelope during his agonizing ten-year journey home, you tread in patience and practical optimism. You are well aware that every journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step, and taking that step is nothing magical or even memorable. Your faith finds repose not in the flashy but in the unseen compounding of daily life: roots must take hold before the tree can rise, buds must open before seeds can be sown. Every win or loss is nothing so momentous as another page in a story that’s still being written. You learn and adjust, adjust and learn. Eventually you’ll land on the sandy shores of your destination.
This is conviction in learning, conviction in a way of being, conviction in principles, conviction that the game itself is worth playing.
Every successful founder has their own unique blend of these three convictions, a signature cocktail if you will.
The formula is simple: the stronger their drink, the more likely they are to succeed.
Cultivating conviction
How do you grow in each type of conviction? Here’s seven ideas to consider.
