This is a short YouTube talk by Jason M. Lemkin offering practical ideas to reduce stress and avoid burnout for startup founders. In this chunk (Idea 9) Lemkin argues that growing faster—especially by hiring one or two high-quality VPs (notably VP of Sales or VP of Marketing)—can substantially reduce founder stress; reaching the top quartile/third of growth improves outlook and relieves pressure.
Ninth idea to lower your stress rate to help avoid burnout. Grow faster now what do I mean? Of course one of the sources of burnout and stress is not growing fast enough. Oh my God. Every everyone on TechCrunch is raising it in. Billy, my friend from my accelerator just raised 80 million. I can't even raise 2. I need to grow faster. 60% at 10 million is not fast enough. Maybe not. But here's the magic thing. I found it again and again with startups and even my own experience. If you can hire a great VP or two and grow faster, often just magic happens. If you can grow from into that top quartile of growth, even top third of growth, everything looks better. Seek out that great VP or two, Find that great VP of sales, that VP of Marketing that can get you leads.
