Staring into voids that stare back

I had mentioned this in my write up about our 10 year anniversary.

And this post yesterday from Scott Weiss at Andreessen Horowitz

Its in that staring deep and hard into the yawning void that one gets their inspiration. Call it sheer abject terror, or motivation. Whatever. It juices your processors into overdrive if you are an entrepreneur. You are at your most creative when you are at your most fearful. And things are never as bad as they may seem. This is what the entrepreneur understands. They get that its hard. They get that you are gonna get your ass whipped from time to time. But … what doesn’t kill you does make you stronger. As Scott writes

Basically our value isn’t merely encoded within our products. Its the product of decades of solving tremendously hard problems, so that our customers don’t have to. There’s value in them thar hills. And more than that, you need to lead, from the front, and not let them see you sweat, as you face these fears. Leading from the rear is not leadership. Its failure. You have to fight your internal demons, in silence. You have to be relentlessly positive, even if you think you are swirling down the crapper. As Scott wrote

I’d expand on this, and say nothing is ever “beneath” a leader. A true leader will get their hands dirty on a regular basis, will get into the muck, wrestle with it, and show the troops how a high ranking master does it. Or get the hell out of the way and let someone with the internal fortitude and external preternatural calm take the reigns. Very good read.