A founder reflects on persistent guilt and pressure to work constantly in order to grow the business faster. The speaker describes an eight-year pattern of overworking driven by opportunity costs, higher stakes as the company scales, and fear of failing to deliver on commitments.
So there's always that kind of guilt of, I've done the stuff I probably need to do today, but I could do more because we want to grow faster, we want to get there. So therefore, I'll just sit in my fucking desk for the next, like, the whole weekend, basically. And to be honest, that's been true for me for, like, the past eight years in many ways, and probably is even more now, because the business is at stage where, like, we built this machine. It's obviously a lot stronger than it was two, three years ago or even a year ago. But I also feel way more pressure and way more, like, opportunity costs if I'm not doing stuff. And also, the stakes are higher if I massively fuck up, like, a month or a quarter or, you know, don't deliver on the things I said I'm going to do.
