Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, Wooden statute from Song Dynasty (960-1279), on exhibit at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco
Since I took the leap and started our company with my co-founder, I get asked often: so how does it feel? Is it harder than you think? To which I always answer: yes, much harder. So hard that had I known it, I probably wouldn’t have done it. That’s a joke. As a matter of fact, now that we have walked out of the wall (Jim McKelvey’s term in The Innovation Stack), we are probably never turning back. And then the next question is, so how do you do it? How do you keep on pushing? How do you cope with the emotional up and downs? How do you stay sane and still motivate the team?
The Chinese culture has deep roots in Buddhism. While I am not a Buddhist by any means, nor a member of any organized religion, in touch times, I’d think of all the concepts that I picked up along the way. I think I can summarize the obstacles we face and how to overcome them based on a framework Buddhism teaches called “The Five Poisons*”.
1. Greed
It seems silly that we are in the startup world raising venture capital all day long, and here I am, talking about greed.
But we don’t build our company just for the money. It’s actually never about the money. Had it been about money, we could and should stay at our cushy corporate jobs and collect a significant payback with a fraction of the effort.
We do this because we are rebels, troublemakers, and believers who want to give back to the world for it to be a better place. Be it building a health watch, a self-driving car or a piece of software that does all the boring work for people.
Of course, we can’t excel without money. We also hope to get some kind of financial reward at the end of the journey. But that’s just a means to an end. Once we figure out that it’s not about the money, things become a bit more tolerable and start to make more sense. Always remember the why, the true north, and let the frenzy about money and money alone fade.
2. Resentment
When things don’t go our way, sometimes we can’t help but resent the people, things or even the world around us. And trust me, in the startup world, most things don’t and won’t go your way.
We need to remember that the world doesn't revolve around us. In the earlier years of my career, I would get into a conflict with a colleague who had a different perspective or even a different agenda and start resenting the person. Many such colleagues are now dear friends, allies, and supporters.
We can’t expect that everyone will agree with our perspective at all times and back us up immediately. Sometimes they don’t because of the specific time, place, and event. Others will stay haters forever. But so what? They have their reasons and we should try to respect that.
Once we realize that the world doesn’t “owe” us anything, we are much more at peace in the face of adversity. In Chinese, we say, nine of ten things in this life won’t go your way (人生不如意事十只八九). That’s just how it is. No need to develop negative emotions and attitudes toward it. Just like Rocky, we take a beating and fight on.
3. Confusion (Obsession)
This is a tough one to translate. I asked ChatGPT and it offered a combination of stupidity, foolishness, craziness, and obsession. Ultimately, we get frustrated because we lack wisdom and clarity.
It’s easy to talk about wisdom and clarity without a big stake on the line. When things become live or die, it’s much more difficult to discuss wisdom calmly.
However, we must. We haven’t found or didn’t find the way because we lack clarity. We don’t fully understand the environment, the market, and the trends. We just stay humble (see the next point), acknowledge that we still need to seek clarity, and keep on searching.
In dating, people often say when it’s right it’s easy. And when it’s hard it’s not right. It can be similar in the startup world. When you finally find that right path, all of sudden, things start to fall into place. That doesn’t mean that it will stay that way, and the “truth” or the “right path” is fluid.
This obstacle can also be some kind of obsession, oftentimes about ourselves. We have an image of who we are, which is frequently tied to a title, a savings account, a physical thing, or others' perception of us. We also obsess about what we are building, how we are doing it, where we think we are going, and how we compare to others. But none of this should matter. We are who we are without all these things. True strength comes from within, regardless of our company, title, wealth, and others’ opinion about us. Getting rid of this self-obsession is another way to get to wisdom.
4. Arrogance
And of course, because we are type-A fighters, we can become arrogant on our journey. We may think we are better than others. We think we are guaranteed to succeed. We imagine we can do no wrong. Only to land on our faces frequently.
So we must be humble and acknowledge that we have shortcomings. There are things we don’t know how to do. There are areas where we may appear to be experts, but in practice, we are quite inept. Once we acknowledge our weaknesses, we can put people and systems in place to hedge against them. We get experts to do things we can’t. We ask others for opinions and help.
5. Doubt
This is probably a fatal one for an entrepreneur. I said to a friend my sentiment on any given day can oscillate between extreme pessimism and exhilarating optimism. But ultimately, I am cautiously optimistic.
We must be. We can’t doubt ourselves, doubt that we can do this, doubt that we will emerge from all these difficulties and ultimately prevail.
To fight doubt, we must have faith. There we go, another religious term. But you get the idea. To believe that we can do this is almost a kind of religion, which, despite common sense, statistics or even physics, we believe that if we get a lever, we can move he world (Archimedes). Crazy? A little bit. But if you are not a little crazy you can’t be an entrepreneur.
Our team and co-founders depend on us to stay centered, optimistic and focused to move forward. And we must move forward. So we will fight greed, resentment, confusion, arrogance and doubt and replace them with generosity, compassion, wisdom, humility and confidence.
*Five poisons mean “贪，嗔，痴，慢， 疑“， and the ways to overcome them are “施，悲，智，虚， 信“。
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