Running a startup is like trying to sprint up the sands of an hourglass as they’re falling. You will always be operating in an environment in which there’s never *enough* of anything to hold onto, and the corresponding emotion to that ‘never enough-ness’ is fear. There is a lot for founders to be afraid of when they’re running their startup. This isn’t about you and it’s not a personal failing - it’s a fact of your ecosystem.
When founders internalize too much fear, they feel unhealthy and unproductive amounts of anxiety. Anxiety can distort thoughts, disrupt sleep and cause illness, harm relationships, and degrade decision-making. Yet founders ignore the reality of the threats they face at their peril. How are you supposed to effectively manage yourself - let alone build a $B business - in this insane emotional pressure cooker?
I know from thousands of hours coaching YC founders that founders scale themselves when they know how to manage their fear, use it for good, and learn to generate and embody trust instead. This Group Office Hours offers insight, strategies, tools, and clarity into the emotions that will be your constant companions from pre-seed through IPO: trust and fear.
What You’ll Learn:
Why anxiety is so common in startup founders
A framework to understand how anxiety helps founders and how it hurts them
Strategies and exercises to manage anxiety
What trust is and how it supports founders’ well-being and execution
Strategies to generate and embody trust
Why generating trust is a competitive advantage
What it feels like to connect with other ambitious founders who are feeling their own version of what you’re going through
Your Host
Amy is a licensed psychotherapist who was hired as Y Combinator’s first Batch Director and became YC’s in-house Founder Coach. While running and scaling the YC batches, she coached nearly 1000 early-stage founders at YC, and she’s coached nearly 1000 later-stage founders since launching The Founder Coach in 2019.
Guidelines
We keep each others’ secrets safe.
The foundation of Group Office Hours is trust: By signing up, we commit to keeping each others’ secrets safe. Confidentiality is what allows founders to open up and get the support they need from this time together. We all commit to maintaining the trust and confidentiality of the group in order to sustain it.
If you share content or information from Group Office Hours with a person or organization who did not participate in the event, you and your entire startup will be neverlisted from all The Founder Coach products, services, offerings, and events going forward. Any tickets you’ve purchased will be forfeited and you will not be refunded.
There are no exceptions to this rule.
Group Office Hours is only for startup founders.
We are exclusive to startup founders in order to create an environment of connection, mutuality, emotional safety, and shared understanding.
The invitation to Group Office Hours does not extend to investors, coaches, journalists, execs, startup employees, etc. If you are not a founder and try to attend a Group Office Hours, you will be removed from the call and neverlisted from all The Founder Coach products, services, offerings, and events going forward. Any tickets you’ve purchased to future events will be forfeited and you will not be refunded.