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The call when they can't sleep
The call at night
Every founder has one problem on their mind that keeps waking them up, and solving it is what unlocks their best version. A vulnerable question is hard to bring to anyone, and many carry large strategic consequences. When the phone rings, it means the investor did a hundred things right to earn that place.
Helping, not answering
The job in that moment is never to answer the question and only to help the founder answer it. That is possible after talking about life, family, society, and politics, along with business, which is why most of the time goes into building that relationship and trust.
Reading consistency
Knowing how a founder behaves comes first. Once that is known, a founder either shows consistency or breaks it, and the same character shows in the offices, in the team, and in how people talk and move.
Why can't founders share doubts with teams?
Employees look to a founder for confidence, so voicing doubts can unsettle a team whose jobs depend on the company. Ben Horowitz describes this loneliness in his 2014 book The Hard Thing About Hard Things. A 2015 study led by psychiatrist Michael Freeman at the University of California, San Francisco, surveyed 242 entrepreneurs and found that 72 percent reported direct or indirect mental health concerns.
Why does helping beat answering?
Edgar Schein, an MIT management scholar, argued in his 2009 book Helping that help works best when the helper asks questions before offering advice. The person with the problem knows the details and has to live with the result. Schein built the argument on decades of work as an organizational consultant.
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