The Thief in Every Founder's Pocket

A few years ago I was talking to a founder who'd just closed her seed round (her first round). She should have been floating. Instead, she pulled up a LinkedIn post about someone locally announcing their Series A and got quiet for a second. "They're already three steps ahead of me," she said.

They weren't three steps ahead. They are just further down a different road, at a different speed, with a different mission and with a different North Star. But try telling that to a founder who's been up since five, doomscrolling through everyone else's highlight reel.

I heard this phrase recently---"comparison is stealing your joy". I'm not sure where (it’s how I write this blog—listening for words, phrases, and thoughts that sound interesting to me and worth exploring. Ask me how I gather these someday.) 

New founders and new CEOs are especially exposed to this. You're building something from nothing, which means you have almost no internal scoreboard yet. So you borrow one. You look at the founder two years ahead of you, the one who raised more, hired faster, got the TechCrunch write-up. And you use their scoreboard to grade your own game, which is a little like judging your new rowboat against someone else's yacht and wondering why you feel so small.

I call this the comparison game, and I hate it. I hate it with my children. I hate it for community leaders. And I hate it for founders. What you see is what others want you to see. You're seeing their headline (the news they want you to see), not their 3 a.m. panic texts to their co-founder. Unwittingly, you're comparing your behind-the-scenes challenges to their public highlight reel, and that math never solves.

The founders I've watched build real, durable companies are the ones who stopped outsourcing their sense of progress. They ask, "Am I better than I was six months ago?" instead of "Am I ahead of them?" That's a question only you can answer honestly, and it's the only one that actually moves you forward.

Three thoughts for you to combat this urge:

1. Keep your view inward, not outward (your company needs this from you)
2. Limit media and especially social media (you can't feel what you don't see)
3. Practice gratitude for where you are on your journey.

So the next time you catch yourself doing the scroll-and-sink thing — comparing your Tuesday to someone else's Instagram — remember you're not just wasting time. You're handing your joy to someone who didn't even ask for it.