In the Anglican tradition I've been part of over the years, there's a prayer said as the kids leave for their own program during the service: May they live a quiet and peaceful life.
You see the same wish in the Jewish tradition in the Priestly Blessing said over children each Shabbat (may you have peace), in the Muslim tradition in the Quran's picture of those who walk gently on the earth, and in the Buddhist tradition in the metta chant: May you be safe, may you live with ease.
For those of us working in venture and alongside founders, this feels foreign.
ONE IDEA I’M SITTING WITH
Roughly half of US workers report feeling used up at the end of the workday, and 45 percent feel emotionally drained. Stress levels just hit their highest point in seven years of tracking. Burnout is at a six-year high.
For founders specifically, more than two-thirds now call burnout a significant problem in the ecosystem. And burned-out workers are nearly three times more likely to be looking for the exit.
My wife and I have been watching the show Beef on HBO Max. Most of the characters have money, or a business, or both. A central theme of the show is a desire to work less, spend more time with their kids, feel closer to a partner, have work that doesn’t feel crushing, or fall in love. The characters want to feel unstuck and freer.
We see this in founders. When we ask them why they do this work, they point to a future state of what life will look like down the road.
And to get there, hard work must happen now. Sell more. Raise more. Build a bigger team to take things off their plate. And while they're at it, don't be as tired, harried, frantic, and anxious. If you are, do something about it. Get counseling. Take some time off. Go be with friends.
All good things.
But we've convinced our founders (and ourselves) that doing more is what finally gets us to the quiet and peaceful life on the other side.
I have a daughter starting middle school this year and another starting fourth grade.
As they start school, I'm hoping and praying for a year that is quiet and peaceful.
A year defined by close friends, a school that supports them, parents who (hopefully) love them well, a schedule that isn't maxed out, dinners that don't feel hurried, and good sleep. But underneath all of it is that one line:
May those girls, now and forever, live a quiet and peaceful life.
Jason Fried has run 37signals, the company behind Basecamp, for more than 20 years. As far as I can tell, he's been profitable every single year using a small team by design with no outside investors. He literally wrote the book on how to run a “quiet and peaceful company,” where he makes the case for what he calls the calm company. His argument is simple. Sustained growth doesn't require chaos. Chaos is a choice. The always-on, maxed-out version of building a company isn't the price of ambition. It's a tax on it.
Also consider Mailchimp. They bootstrapped in Atlanta and never raised a dollar of venture capital. After growing deliberately for two decades, they sold to Intuit for $12 billion, the largest acquisition of a bootstrapped company in history.
As leaders behind founders, we have many responsibilities. The two most important ones are to grow and scale founders and their companies, and to keep our own organizations running.
The easy answer for many of us has been to push our founders and ourselves to build, grow, scale, get the big team, exit, and run the playbook again.
But maybe, before we push the go button, we first ask whether the quiet and peaceful life is available now. Not on the other side of the exit.
Where we begin by asking: Will the quiet and peaceful life make me, and my founders, successful?
Where a team of two, living in a place that isn't flashy, saving money with less travel and fewer nights out, may actually be a better model than a team of 20 burning through $500K a month.
With a life defined by close friends. People who continue to love us well. A schedule that isn't maxed out. Dinners that don't feel harried. Good sleep.
With work that lets us stay in business for 20 years. Or even sell for $12 billion.
Allowing us to live what many of us have been craving all along -
A quiet and peaceful life.
With love and trust,
Pat
TWO QUESTIONS I’M ASKING
Where do you believe is the best place to launch a startup today, and why?
I'll share the responses in the next newsletter. This is a genuine question I have, not a play for engagement. I keep getting asked this, don't have a great answer yet, and think it has real implications for where and how venture organizations should operate.
Has anyone done a "work retreat” that you would go on again without a second guess?
If so, I'd love to hear more about what it looked like and what made it so good. I'm thinking about setting up a few for GVN members, but there are a lot of bad examples of work retreats out there.
THREE THINGS I’M READING
1) "Couples Who Do This Together Have Stronger, Healthier Marriages." And no, it's not what you think. It's exercising together. The study points to "shared physical activity simply gives couples uninterrupted time together," away from the pull of work, kids, and everything else.
2) Disclaimer: I'm not advocating for a side here, just an observation that showed up this week. Companies that maintained DEI policies after the Trump administration's executive order have had better stock market returns.
3) Haven't we known this all along? This recent study did brain scans of dogs to show that they can actually tell when we're happy, sad, or frustrated.
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