Some time ago I saw somewhere a similar graph to the below as a meme. I could not find it ever again, but I have been thinking about it a lot.

(edit: someone just pointed out that the graph I saw came from this article: http://www.jessyoko.com/blog/2012/11/07/why-startup-founders-are-always-unhappy/)

Your happiness is the first derivative of the growth of your business. When it grows, you are happy. When things get in the way, you get stressed and unhappy.

This picture is probably the most accurate representation of my life over the last 18 months. I often find myself to be unhappy, maybe because our user traffic was lower than yesterday, or because we did not deliver a feature on the day we had planned, or because the page was down for a few hours, or because some client did not close, or because we got a negative comment from a user, or because our servers were more expensive than we expected… and those events do not let me sleep, I suffer, and I punish myself and those around me.

And that's a lack of perspective from my side. When I look back, the ride has been incredible for Traity over the last few months. We got investment from the best possible investors. We are now a team of 10 extraordinary people. We were at 500Startups where I met the most inspiring founders. We now have our own office and won every startup competition we participated in. In 2013 we moved from 30,000 users to 4,500,000, and yet, on a day to day basis, why is it that I can be “unhappy”? I have tried to unbundle this unhappiness, so that I can focus on being happier:

The positives are very binary: Getting investment is a lot of stress, meetings, things that don´t go well, and then there is only one thing that actually goes well: The final signature. The same goes for product launches, PR, hiring people, getting traffic, clients, etc. So even for positive events, the longest part of the event is “bad”.

Getting investment is a lot of stress, meetings, things that don´t go well, and then there is only one thing that actually goes well: The final signature. The same goes for product launches, PR, hiring people, getting traffic, clients, etc. So even for positive events, the longest part of the event is “bad”. Almost nothing ever works , the same example with getting investment is simple: You will get rejected 95% of the times. Or finding market fit. Product is likely to suck most of the times. Or metrics, which are unlikely to satisfy your shareholders and yourself. So the “good” binary outcomes only happen once in a while.

, the same example with getting investment is simple: You will get rejected 95% of the times. Or finding market fit. Product is likely to suck most of the times. Or metrics, which are unlikely to satisfy your shareholders and yourself. So the “good” binary outcomes only happen once in a while. Expectations increase. As soon as you raise your investment, or get a customer, you only have 1 hour to celebrate, maybe dinner with team. As soon as that finishes, you are only focused on the next impossible objective, which again, is likely to go wrong for many reasons or most of the times. In the case of raising money, the new expectation is to reach the next milestone. In the case of increasing traffic, your “best traffic from last week” becomes your “minimum benchmark” for next week , which in many cases is unsustainable.

As soon as you raise your investment, or get a customer, you only have 1 hour to celebrate, maybe dinner with team. As soon as that finishes, you are only focused on the next impossible objective, which again, is likely to go wrong for many reasons or most of the times. In the case of raising money, the new expectation is to reach the next milestone. In the case of increasing traffic, your , which in many cases is Good things seem to be less important than undetermined or bad things. If there are two risks happening at the same time (and many things are likely to be happening at the same time) where one gets solved in a positive way, that event becomes irrelevant and your happiness will only depend on the outcome of the second risk.

than undetermined or bad things. If there are two risks happening at the same time (and many things are likely to be happening at the same time) where one gets solved in a positive way, that event becomes irrelevant and your happiness will only depend on the outcome of the second risk. Your startup is your life. Its progress has a huge correlation with your personal situation, unlike working for bigger companies where you might not have so much control over their success or failure.

Effectively, in this game, it´s almost impossible to win. With those thoughts in mind, the graph is more likely to look like this:

A and A´are similar to the previous graph. However, as expectations increase, when a good event happens, like B, there is no time to celebrate it and you only see the negative things that might be happening. In the event C, if there are two outcomes happening at the same time, the first one cannot be even celebrated because there is only focus on the second.

Now, of course this simply does not make sense, because I am living the dream:

I am doing what I want, following my own passion

With the most inspiring individuals in the world

Trying to create a better world as I envision it.

Becoming a more mature, better person and better professional every day.

So next year:

I will enjoy the good things that happen, when they happen, and celebrate more often. I will keep a positive mood on a regular basis, independent from the outcome of events I cannot control. I will look in retrospect more often, to realize that in the big order of things we are better off than last week, last month, last year.

If you feel the same pain I have been feeling, I recommend you to look back on the person you were when you started, how much you have learned and how much things have moved forward. It might make you smile only a few seconds, until you remember the challenges you are facing now, but that´s exactly the thought process we need to change. Live the dream, yes, but also enjoy the dream.