A Blessing and Still Angry

Last week, Manuel described two kinds of founders he has observed. The exit-driven one who walks away clean, and the purpose-driven one who lingers too long and becomes a dead man walking. This week is the last chapter of his story. Most founder stories have a redemption arc.

The founder struggles, learns, grows, and tells you it was all worth it in the end. Manuel's story has that, but parts of his experience are still unresolved. I think it's been a few years since the hardest part of that transition. And I think overall, I feel better today.

What I thought at some point was pretty dark in terms of feeling what's going to happen now. My whole life tied to the thing and now I'm no longer tied to it. And who am I? And it just used to question a lot of things.

But I think on that transition that whatever I went through, I feel a lot better than maybe if I didn have if I had had that wake up and very rough shock maybe it shock maybe I could have continued not fully finding myself in a way After the company is gone, what's left? For lots of founders, the company wasn't just the work. It was also the answer to who you are. The thing that explained you to yourself and to everyone else.

And when it's gone, that question comes back up. I did the same thing with Bunny. It felt good telling people I was a startup founder. It became my identity and my source of belonging in communities I was a part of.

And I felt that loss after we had shut down as well. Suddenly I was a former founder. I failed founder. Both labels didn't feel good and were harder to talk about.

Benwell looks back on all of his work and still feels anger at times because it didn't work out as he expected. Sometimes I'm still processed and I still get angry about it. A blessing and still angry. So at the end of the day to me it was a blessing because it got me to a better place personally in terms of my relationship with myself Both true at once and you could feel the tension between the two And I'd fall into the anger camp if I had a company that was working and then got stunted by supply chain issues.

Most shutdown narratives want to land on one or the other side. The failure that made you who you were or the failure that still stinks because it was out of your control. But Manuel can handle and hold both at the same time, which is a more honest version than either on its own. Because they don't cancel each other out.

They coexist. They do because we have versions of ourselves, and it's okay that they coexist. They need to be recognized and appreciated. The anger will still show up now and again, but eventually will go away.

Trying to push it away sooner will only make it stay longer. It took time. It didn't fully resolve. But the person on the other side is someone he likes better now than the one who went into it from the beginning What keeps emerging from these founder conversations is how much identity gets tangled up in the company and how each founder finds their own way through it.

For Manuel, writing became his a tool to get through it. I think to me it was important to write and the writing that I'm doing a lot right after and doing that transition right after. That was very useful for me personally in having conversations with myself. And that's why I call it Advise Myself.

It was really just my own self-discovery and my own journey and things that I wanted to go through and process myself. And the writing helps a lot. Conversations with himself on paper. You can find them and read them at advisemyself.

com. I took inspiration from him, and I've gotten back into journaling as well. spending more time checking in with myself before I start anything new. Thank you, Manuel, for sharing your story.

If you've been in this chapter before, this series is for you. Next month, a new founder and a new story.