I was born and raised in Israel, but my love affair with America began in my early teens when I would wear faded jeans and plaid flannel shirts and play country music on my silver Sony Walkman. One track I always loved listening to was Waylon Jennings’ and Willie Nelson’s twangy rendition of “Mamas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys”—a song that captures the loneliness of being a cowboy as well as the challenges that lifestyle poses for their loved ones.
Little did I know the longing the song stirred in my adolescent heart would resonate with me decades later: Its depiction of the brutal, lonely life of a cowboy mirrored my own experience as a founder. When listening to the song, I sometimes replace the word “cowboy” with “founder” and smile to myself. Try it—it’s fun!
The entrepreneurial life
Just as we mythologize the cowboy on horseback riding into the sunset, people tend to glamorize the entrepreneurial life. The truth is the entrepreneurial journey is not about popping champagne and riding around in limos and having everyone enthusiastically back your big ideas. In reality, it is a high-stress, low-sleep, and often unenjoyable life. Whenever anybody asks me if they should take the leap and start a company, my first response is an emphatic, “No!” or as Jennings and Nelson liked to sing, “Let them be lawyers and doctors and such.”
There are a hundred reasons to stay far, far away from entrepreneurship, particularly if you want a stable, reliable, fulfilling career—but I would start with loneliness. Like the song says, founders “are never at home and always alone, even with someone they love.” This is hard on entrepreneurs but equally so on the people who love and live with them. Launching a business is a full-time pre-occupation. It is never just business—it is personal, and all-consuming. You bring your bad work days and the accompanying stress home because your venture is part of you, not something you slip off like an overcoat when you walk in the door. Bottom line: You will be miserable and you will make the people closest to you miserable as well!
Ninety percent of startups fail. Of the 10% that don’t disappear, precious few are wildly successful. These are not attractive odds for a sane person—and the price you and your loved ones will pay is huge.
It’s an extreme sport
So why do I do it? Like the song says: “He’s not wrong—he’s just different!” I cannot help it: I am, apparently, a cowboy! I’m also the son of two entrepreneurs, so maybe it’s in my blood. I need the adrenaline rush, the chase and sense of risk, the creativity and the total 200% immersion into something I love. Being an entrepreneur is an extreme sport—the most painful, scary, exhilarating ride imaginable. I feed on the nonstop challenge, the thrill of investing and innovating, the relentless stretching to the near-breaking point. I thrive when collaborating with the incredible people on my team, my investors, and clients to create something meaningful, transformational, and near impossible. Being a founder is my road to self-actualization, and that is in itself the incomparable reward at the end of the rainbow.
So, if like me, you cannot help yourself and are going to take the plunge into entrepreneurship despite your better judgment, a few words of advice…
- Prepare for the loneliness, and if you can, build a support system. Seek out other founders who have been in the same place of terror-excitement-isolation-immersion so at least there will be someone in the world who sees you and understands. Surround yourself with people who will keep you honest.
- Be kind and show love and gratitude to your loved ones. Your choices and lifestyle, as well as your physical and emotional absence will be hard enough for your family and friends to deal with. Remember the people you love are probably experiencing a lot of the stress that you’re experiencing, without meaningfully participating in the thrill part.
- Be communicative. Before you become serious with anyone, be very clear that you are not a person with a job: Your job is who you are, and that will likely never change. Ensure that your kids, partner, and friends know it’s not them! It’s just that you can’t turn off that part of your brain when you’re having dinner, playing tennis, or getting into bed at night. Though you may be “easy to love” you’re also “harder to hold”—an elusiveness that doesn’t work for everyone.
I will say that seeing my father, and then my mother launch and successfully run their businesses opened my eyes to the possibility that I, too, could carve my own path—and I like to think I modeled that for my kids as well. It’s not all bad having a founder in the family after all.
Sending love to my fellow entrepreneurs, and empathy to their loved ones.
Gil Mandelzis is the founder and CEO of Capitolis.
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