Why Most Startup Founders are Politicians

Ego drives a lot of startup founders. Be careful what you wish for.

To build a great startup, you need to put the mission ahead of the founder. From what I’ve seen in the startup circles, a lot of founders are driven to build a billion-dollar startup because they want to be seen by others in a certain way.

I wouldn’t say that I am so spiritual and have no ego. I do have an ego myself and I also sometimes worry about how I am perceived. But at least I am at a stage in my life where I realize that the ego is fiction and temporary. I constantly try to be invisible.

In one of the recent events in my industry, I wore a mask (like the COVID mask) most of the time because I did not want anyone to recognize me and try to take selfies with me. There are of course very nice people, but many people just want to take selfies and post them on their social media to show off some branding by association. I did of course remove my mask and talk to the nicer people, but not everyone.

A startup founder’s ego, image, and social persona can be a limiting factor in building something. To make you understand this deep concept, let me give you a few analogies.

If a painter is not 100% into his painting and worries about how his painting will be perceived, he will not be able to focus on the painting. He should involve himself so much in the painting that the painter literally becomes the painting. You might know that Van Gogh is famous for his painting “The Starry Night”.

But did you also know that…

Despite only working for 10 years – from the age of 27 up until his early demise at 37 – van Gogh was incredibly prolific. He produced more than 900 paintings and many more drawings and sketches, which works out at nearly a new artworks every 36 hours!!

That’s an example of a painter dissolving into the painting. There was nothing held back. Not even the painter.

Similarly:

• The speaker should become the speech

• The singer should become the song

• The dancer should become the dance

• The writer should become the writing

• The biker should become the bike

And so on and so forth.

If a writer doesn’t become the writer, the writer is holding back creative energy. The holding back happens because of the ego. Because the writer is thinking what the world will think of him when he publishes his work. He becomes a politician.

Politicians are generally inferior people with an inferiority complex. That’s why they want to “become something”. They want to hold a post. They want VIP cars with security because they want to “feel important”. Deep inside they feel worthless and hollow. By holding a certain post they can prove to the world that they are not inferior. They are the lowest class of humans in the society.

Leaders are different. Leaders just want to lead. They accept posts with reluctance. Their goal is not to hold a certain post or a designation. Their goal is to create change and holding an important post becomes a necessity to impact that change. Think about Abdul Kalam. He was a leader. He never did anything in his life to prove to the world he was great. He just loved his work and loved passing on positivity to people. He reluctantly accepted the post of The President. And even when he was president he never came across as someone who is trying to prove that he is great to others.

Alexander, the Great was not so great after all. All the work that he did in conquering nearby territories was not driven by a mission to improve anything apart from feeding his own ego. After he died in 323 BC, everything fell apart. That’s how most startups fail after the founder quits or dies. There is no purpose to building such a startup.

Not letting your ego come in between your mission is a delicate art. When someone does something with love, they are likely to fail many times. Until they succeed, they have no problem focusing on their work because they have no ego. But once someone achieves something, they get awards, people appreciate them and then it becomes difficult to experiment with stuff because now they cannot afford to fail.

Building a startup is all about doing experiments. Some experiments succeed and some experiments fail. But once some of the experiments succeed wildly, the founder gets a reputation and now the reputation becomes a burden to do further experiments and take risks. Now they cannot afford to experiment and fail. And since they stop doing experiments, they are more likely to fail.

If you see a startup founder with the tagline “Forbes X under X” in his Twitter profile, you can smell a politician there. They are doing stuff to build a certain personal brand, a certain image in front of the world. They want to “prove” to the world that they are not lesser than anyone. Don’t get into that trap. No one cares about anything after you die. There is no need to leave a legacy. Nothing will matter once you are dead. You will mix into the same soil that a useless beggar also mixes into.

When you have no ego or almost no ego, you will attract people with a drive to achieve something to achieve something than to build a name and fame. Egoistic people attract egoistic people and they hate each other. Humble people attract humble people and they love each other.

Focus on the work, do work for work’s sake. Let people appreciate or say that you are a failure, it doesn’t matter. What matters is your work and work alone. Work is a way to release creative energies. If you think about the worker, the creative energy will be blocked.

Love the work that you do in your startup so much, that there is no founder left. Work so much that the founder becomes the startup. Dissolve into your startup. Become nothing but the startup.