New eBook: Surviving The Startup

I am proud to announce today the launch of a new eBook: Surviving The Startup: An Entrepreneur’s Guide To Better Mental, Physical, and Emotional Health.  To create this eBook we talked with nearly two dozen entrepreneurs across a variety of industries and received tips and best practices on how to not only survive the startup journey but thrive during it. For me, this is a topic close to my own heart, as I have experienced some of the personal toll startup life can take. The year was 2016. Dyn, the company I worked at, was experiencing major growing pains. We were in those awkward teenage years of a company where you are no longer a child but not quite ready to become an adult. It was a very stressful time filled with constant change and uncertainty.   I remember sitting at my desk scrolling through my sent emails looking for a particular email when suddenly I couldn’t see out of my left eye. It kind of had that feeling like you stared at the sun for too long and even though you turned away you couldn’t stop seeing those flashes of light.  This was concerning to me. I became more concerned when it happened again a week later, while I was driving.  Both times I went home, laid down for a while, and eventually it went away.  But it kept happening more frequently. With three small children at home, I was worried it was something serious. I eventually had an MRI and saw a neurologist. It was just stress. The doctor told me I should play more basketball.  For a while, I was embarrassed by this and my inability to healthily process a stressful situation. And, the reality was, it wasn’t even that stressful. It was perceived as stressful. My family was healthy. I had food to eat. Yet, I was so stressed by work that it manifested itself in me losing my vision. Again, I was embarrassed. Until I started talking to other people and I realized I wasn’t alone. Not even close. I mentioned the above story once in a newsletter and the amount of follow-up I got was astounding. People shared their stories of their own struggles dealing with the stress of life – both career and family building.  Building something is one of the most exciting journeys you can take. But it isn’t easy. Company builders are usually hard-charging people who once they focus on a goal they go after it, full steam ahead, consequences beware. This mentality can jeopardize your mental, physical, and emotional health so that even if your dreams come true you can feel like you’re stuck in a nightmare.  But it doesn’t have to. There are plenty of tips and tricks that entrepreneurs have learned over the years that have helped them to not only survive the startup journey but thrive.  At York IE we are trying to build an entrepreneur-first investment firm that cares about the people behind the startups. Our vision is to literally reshape how startups are built, scaled, and monetized. One of the ways we can do that is by helping to arm entrepreneurs with some of the tools that can help them make the entire startup journey more enjoyable. We also have a great portfolio filled with world-class entrepreneurs. And so we asked them for their advice. They provided us with a treasure trove of valuable information. They were open and honest.  It led us to publish our new eBook: Surviving The Startup: An Entrepreneur’s Guide To Better Mental, Physical, and Emotional Health.   I think everyone who reads this eBook will benefit from these entrepreneurs’ willingness to share. I cannot thank them enough for taking the time out of their busy schedules to provide us such thoughtful insights. It is a true testament to the startup ecosystem and how good so many entrepreneurs are as human beings.  This is by no means a complete guide. We hope to continue to update this eBook and add more insights we discover or you are willing to share. But it is a start. If you want to contribute to a future edition, please email us (contact@york.ie) or hit us up on Twitter (@yorkgrowth).  Building a company is hard. But you don’t have to go through it alone. We are a community here to support each other and this eBook is a good first step.   We hope you enjoy it!