Does Startup Success Validate Us Personally?

No matter how much success we create with our startups, it almost never "cures" our need for validation. If anything, it often makes it worse.

It usually starts with this feeling that we need to prove the world wrong, and when we do, we'll have the last laugh (which is just code for "I need personal validation"). The relationship between building a startup and getting "revenge on something" is particularly strong with Founders because the very nature of what we do is so damn combative!

Haters and doubters are as much a part of our startup DNA as investors and customers. We've all had someone who thought we'd never pull this off, who questioned our ability and idea. Whether we admit it publicly or not, we all want to show them how incredibly wrong they were.

But when that time comes, will it matter?

It's OK to Need Validation

To start, let's get this out of the way - it's perfectly normal to need validation. I know the idea is that we're supposed to say "I don't need anyone's validation!" as some mark of our strength and security. But that's bullshit. We all need some level of validation, so let's just call it what it is.

Our validation is a counterbalancing point to our insecurity, whether it's how we deal with people doubting our vision or simply how we've always felt about ourselves. There's no version of building a startup where everyone thinks we're amazing, everything goes our way, and our arms cramp up from all of the high fives we're getting from everyone.

Everyone shits on us — that's how this game goes. No, it's not awesome, so we absolutely stack that emotion and insecurity like giant stacks of cash in our emotional Scrooge McDuck vault. We lie awake, night after night, dreaming of what it will be like when we can finally swap all that insecurity with the sweet, sweet taste of professional validation.

It's Never What We Think

That dream, however, like any dream, misses quite a few details of reality.

The first thing we mis-calculate is how our own baseline insecurities will be addressed. However, how we view ourselves prior to success will never truly be changed by success because we will always harbor those demons.

Here's what Brian Chesky, the co-Founder of AirBnB said about how he felt after he lead one of the greatest startup success stories of all time through IPO:

“I had this image that if I got successful, I’d have all these people around me, have all these friends... everything in my life would be fixed,” said Chesky. “I do think people should achieve their dreams, [but] don’t go into it [thinking] that just success is going to fill some hole in you.”

Chesky went on to openly admit that the IPO was "one of the saddest periods" of his life. That's because when we fantasize about what success will do, we wave an imaginary wand that magically cures things that success doesn't really cure.

The Key is NOT Caring

The validation we're looking for doesn't really stem from proving all the haters wrong. The validation comes from not caring about them at all. You see, if our goal for validation requires an external source, be it our parents, our loved ones, or some personal villain we've created, we've given the power to them, and therefore we don't own our path to validation.

But when we take our need for their validation off the table, we win. We win by not caring. It's incredibly easy to say and damn near impossible for most of us to ever actually do.

Perhaps our vision of success helps us to get to the point of not caring, and that's a great motivator too. But realistically our visions of success as some miracle cure are almost always just that — empty visions. All the power we will ever need to dispel that negative energy and drive that validation are right in front of us — right now.

Only we can give ourselves the validation we will ever need. The question is whether we feel we should.

In Case You Missed It

If We Want Power, Create Power A lot of us are used to hearing people telling us what we should and shouldn't do, what we can and cannot achieve just because these people have tried it or have been in a similar situation. What they don't realize though is what works for them may not work for you, and vice versa.

Am I Lying or Just Being Optimistic? (podcast) What if you have this strong conviction that what you're building will lead to success? What if you have this strong sense of positivity and optimism? Will it be enough to gain people's trust and continue to pour more money into your company? But what if it's just blind optimism and you're not really getting anywhere?

Startup Culture is a Reflection of the Founder Everything you do has implications and if you let instigators of negativity be, you're allowing a nasty culture to spread.