Is it time to get back in the game?

founder experience Feb 01, 2022

If you haven’t heard it yet, check out the After the Lights Go Out podcasts from talkSPORT. It is a series of interviews with sports stars about the challenges of life after retirement. One theme is that although the body may no longer be up to it, often the heart is still willing and the spirit requires the nourishment of adulation that comes with success. It is disorienting. Steve Harmison, one of the hosts, likens the experience to ‘coming out of a supermarket with heavy bags of shopping and not knowing where your car is.’ Others describe it as devastating as a bereavement. Unsurprisingly, many participants have had mental health issues to contend with.

Founders will be familiar with these sentiments. The adrenaline of driving a high pressure company becomes addictive. If you have spent every day for ten years spinning plates to stop them from crashing to the ground, what do you do when you stop suddenly? Companies are not good at managing these transitions to ‘civilian life’, so it is yet another thing for founders to tackle.

The odds are that you will one day be an ex-founder. Some go early, falling out with co-founders or losing the passion necessary to endure the struggle. Some are pushed out as the company grows, as they lose control of their boards. Between 20% and 40% of founders do not remain in their original role after investment is taken. If up to 90% start-ups fail, then many founders will simply reach the end of the line and be left sitting in an empty carriage. Then there’s the lucky few who are able to secure a successful exit. They too cease to be founders, having sold their companies and begun the inevitable transition to the future management team.

The fabric of mental harmony may already be fraying before founders have to face a life changing event such as an exit. There is a new category of chronic trauma called Leadership Trauma, based on the experiences of CEOs and start-up founders. 23% of tech founders with 11-100 employees say it has had a negative impact on their mental health. This is much more likely to occur if founders have raised external capital, which is inevitable for rapidly scaling businesses that come with additional pressures. The majority of founders are not comfortable talking about such issues with their investors but would like to. Awkward.

What happens when you are no longer a founder?

Firstly, you have a lot more time on your hands. You need to think how you are going to fill it. Definitely take time to recover your energy, restore your health and repair whatever else you sacrificed for work. Catch up on those hobbies and that enormous backlog on your Netflix playlist.

Secondly, you will have a lot to process mentally. Whether you went out in a blaze of glory or limped out ignominiously, there will be a long sequence of decisions to re-live and alternate scenarios to work through. You won’t want to do this, but it is a natural neurological process where you brain files everything away. There will be regrets but try to focus instead on what you achieved, how you have grown, and what you have learnt. I bet this is far more than if you’d taken that easy job as a PR executive at an accountancy firm.

Thirdly, you will have to answer one of life’s trickier questions: what next? In the vast majority of exits, people are too young or have not earnt enough to retire. They are too talented or too driven for a quiet life away from the heat of entrepreneurial battle. You will have lost a key part of your identity. If you described yourself as a founder, what are you now? Wayne Bridge, once of Chelsea and England calls himself a stay-at-home Dad. You will either have to recover this identity or replace it with something new.

But what are ex-founders good for? Like ex-elite sports stars, a lot as it happens. You could try one of these options from the football playbook:

Give back to the world. Is there a charitable cause you are passionate about? Didier Drogba set up a Foundation to improve healthcare and educational conditions in Africa.
Retrain and do something else. Follow in the footsteps of George Weah, who became President of Liberia. Or aim a little lower and become an oil company sales rep like Emile Heskey.
Try again. Start another company. Why not, you have a greater chance of success. Founders of a previously successful business have a 30% chance of success in their next venture (compared to 18% in their first).
Become a coach or manager. You won’t know if you are the next Alex Ferguson if you don’t try. With hundreds of thousands of new start-ups being created every year, there are plenty of new founders who need words of wisdom from advisers and old(er) hands.
Media work. Become a pundit. Write your memoirs or a how-to business book and hit the public speaking circuit. Just dodge any joint platforms with Roy Keane as they don’t tend to end well.
Buy a club. If you made cash on your exit, why not become an angel investor? Or, if you made a lot of cash, create your own VC fund? Daniel Ek is busy ploughing 1 billion euros into new early stage technology start-ups.