[Is There Such a Thing As Founder Syndrome?: Testing a New Idea for Entrepreneurship]
As a lover of language, I often will obsess and delight in a phrase or a word that I think offers unique insight into humanity or experience.
Language can sometimes open up doors into understanding, not simply because a definition is precise, or taken literally. Used in an inventive way, you can see the world differently and perhaps understand something for its unique traits.
I find this to be the case with understanding and learning about founders. Founders tend to break the mold, as we say, but we tend to see them -- I say "we" meaning the general VC and startups ecosystem -- through a really traditional business lens, contrary to how unique they are.
In fact, I am not so sure you can see a founder's traits through a business lens, because what founders do is much different than simply running a business. I think you have to creatively see them in a new way.
This idea struck me deeply while I was in Japan, where I was relaxing with a memoir about the late neurologist Dr. Oliver Sacks, while my colleagues skied and snowboarded on a cloud-covered mountain in the snow. Sacks died in 2015, but spent a career curing neurological diseases by taking a unique approach.
I came across the word "syndrome."
It has a nice ring to it, but first, the context.
First of all, Sacks is famous for a medical experiment that "unlocked" patients who were frozen in a kind of living coma situation. You may have seen this in a movie called "Awakenings."
These patients would be frozen in a state of hibernation, awake, but not able to move. Sacks came up with the idea of dosing them with a chemical called L-DOPA, and the results were extraordinary. Almost overnight, these "vegetables," as he empathetically described him in his memoir, awakened. In one case, Sacks took a red ball he kept in his pocket and threw it at a seemingly unmovable patient, who immediately snapped to and caught the ball, threw it back, and then resumed his catatonic state.
Sacks was also something of an eccentric, who was notorious for doing things that probably a normal sane person would never do.
For example, as a medical intern in California, he once drank a vial of blood, washing it down with a glass of milk, simply because he felt compelled to understand what it tasted like. A lover of motorcycles, he quite recklessly "stepped off," as he put it, his bike traveling at 80mph, just to see what would happen. What happened? A few bruises and a torn leather jacket and pants. But nothing horrible.
In certain circles, he is still considered to be notorious and misunderstood. But his view of diagnoses centered on finding the "syndrome," and treating the syndrome as a kind of identity.
And here is our word of the day!
I am not suggesting that founders are sick people. I am saying that they are different, because they present a type of syndrome that other humans do not possess.
Syndrome, in the Greek etymology, means "a running together."
Often we look at disease as this kind of failure of the system. Something has invaded. Something has harmed the corpus of the human. But Sacks looked at syndrome issues quite literally as a grouping of things that made the patient unique.
Instead of instantly diagnosing and medicating neurological patients, he would sit and talk to them for hours, trying to understand the unique syndrome of their identity.
In one instance, he talked for four hours to a raving manic dementia patient, later concluding that there was something "inherently human about that identity in there."
Can the same be done with founders? Do they present a syndrome of entrepreneurship?
What are the characteristics of this founder syndrome?
I won't spend this whole post describing my idea, but I think a central and core attribute of a Founder Syndrome is that the discomfort that founders experience with reality is also the impetus and the catalyst that moves them to "solve" reality with their own attributes.
This syndrome manifests itself in an overarching belief that they can change the world. They are somewhat delusional and even maniacal in their approach to reality solutions. The world doesn't work for them, and rather than mire themselves in depression and disappointment in it, their syndrome rather creatively enables them to, in an expansive way, impact the lives of other people, and create things that shift reality.
Steve Jobs once said that you can only understand your journey by looking backwards, and connecting the dots after you have completed them. This is quite symptomatic of a founder syndrome.
There are no dots to connect, until you make them. A consciousness that sees the world for what it can be can seem to some like crazy talk. Just look at Elon Musk. For how long has he heard that his ideas are stupid, crazy, not worth the paper they are printed on?
Or Nikola Tesla, who died in poverty, not being believed?
Or Marie Curie, who obsessively hunted down invisible radioactivity, which killed her, but without whom we would not be able to treat cancer, or plausibly have nuclear energy?
All of these people have something of the Founder Syndrome, an ability to see what is not seen by others, and to manifest it into reality, creating incredulity until the new reality is undeniable.
Are you suffering from a syndrome, friend? If you would like to be part of our accelerator and invent what has not existed before, and if you would like to be around other unique people like you, track our application process at https://appworks.tw/accelerator
Our next cohort will start in the summer.
We would be glad to take your application when they launch later in the year. We will be accepting founders working in AI and Blockchain.
Doug Crets
Communications Master, AppWorks
Photo by Franck V. on Unsplash
同時也有1部Youtube影片,追蹤數超過11萬的網紅Serene Vitale,也在其Youtube影片中提到,「很多時候,選擇付諸行動,最壞的狀況其實就只是維持現狀,不是很划算嗎?」 ♥ Follow Me: *NY Fashion Intern Diary @ Dcard: https://ppt.cc/fJnDnx *Instagram: serene_her_morning_elegance : h...
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connect the dots business 在 Henry Sir Facebook 的精選貼文
當學習變成一種投資(甚至投機)行為,不問興趣,只問回報,問題就出現了。
冇回報的,不讀,看不到回報的,不讀,看不到即時回報的,遲d先讀,結果最後冇讀。機關算盡,讀果d唔出,出果d冇讀。年年都怨,但年年都有人去tip題。澳門賭場不會執,因為人性本貪,冇能力的人,尤其愛投機取巧。
jupas選科。讀文科會乞食,不讀,讀computer science變IT狗,不讀,讀business唔專,不讀。
識讀一定讀nursing,裡面大把女,一定有飯開,有前途。幼兒教育都好吖,d家長肯俾錢,有錢途吖,教幼稚園,有咩問題啊?本身唔中意小朋友?冇所謂啦,好pay窩,who cares?總之要讀d搵到錢嘅科啦,唔係點cover d學費吖?
see?呢d就係典型香港人。當年科網股未爆前,個個讀IT,結果出黎全部趴街。大佬,你見到個市最旺,已經係水尾啦。你走去用宜家個market environment同assumption去tip畢業後個市,然後投資4-5年時間去賭,咁其實係好愚蠢嘅行為。
我嘅睇法係咁:
第一,當你用宜家最hit嘅野去tip5年後畢業後的前景,睇錯市機會好大。市場調整好快,風水輪流轉,你學位一讀就5年,中間冇得翻身。個市冇得估,4-5年cycle太長。
第二,你覺得hit人地都覺得hit,呢個系市場共識,情況就如d人搶新樓,越貴越多人買,因為大家預期會升。但一退潮,剩下的人大都冇咩好下場。情況就如bba、law人才開始供應過剩,因為幾年前好景d人搶讀,爭崩頭,好多本身唔中意,又走去讀,睇錢讀書最辛苦,因為一foresee到冇錢,就容易放棄。
第三,你用時間讀一樣你唔中意,但覺得“搵到錢”嘅科,係好不智。因為你一生人裡面,可以被你專心invest自己能力和專業的時間係呢幾年。好多人智慧啟蒙,就係大學時期。你睇錢份上,做短期行為,最後錯過了追求自己興趣和啟蒙的經歷,將來一定後悔,錢慢慢搵,但智慧和能力係一世。有d人高學歷,但一生人都冇開過竅。
香港人,生活壓力大,咩都講return on investment,呢個係好無奈嘅事實。但學習本質應該係discovery process,不應經常當作investment。大學不是職業訓練所,大學畢業後,不論你是文科還是gbus,出到社會你都係從頭開始適應職場文化。到時先報一d technical少少嘅course,自我增值,或者索性創業,做自己喜歡的事。
小弟已到30之年,還是懷念十年前自由自在大學生活,不為錢、齋為興趣潛lib睇書。如果冇呢個“為興趣追求知識嘅空間”,我就不會研究教學法,今日就不會搞網上教學平台。
Steve Jobs講過connect the dots,上天自有安排,越計較,越一無所獲。當你做腦細時,才想起到當年討厭的中史課本,裡面有個唐太宗,其實他是個一流的企業家和CEO。
#唔好太計較讀書搵到幾多錢
#搵錢還搵錢讀書還讀書
#你地覺得係咪
#一起討論下👇
connect the dots business 在 Serene Vitale Youtube 的最佳貼文
「很多時候,選擇付諸行動,最壞的狀況其實就只是維持現狀,不是很划算嗎?」
♥ Follow Me:
*NY Fashion Intern Diary @ Dcard: https://ppt.cc/fJnDnx
*Instagram: serene_her_morning_elegance : https://ppt.cc/fzijEx
♥ Contact (Business Only) : [email protected]
♥ This video is NOT sponsored.
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