The Founder 50
Refusing to be a Fat estrogenic tech bro
Before we begin:
Neurovolt gives the brain the raw material. Tyrosine to rebuild what stress depletes. Alpha-GPC for acetylcholine. Rhodiola for fatigue. Theanine so you don’t get tweaked out.
It pairs amazing with coffee.
I take it. I don’t sell things I don’t take.
As Ive been in the vortex of venture capital and meeting Silicon valley people, Ive realized theres an entire culture around Founders building their companies, fighting to raise, proceeding through the building period (and subsequent raises)…
and getting fat in the process.
Whether its grossly fat or skinny fat, the general consensus is that your health is going to nose dive.
Analogous to the Freshmen 15, there is a Founder 50.
This happens to men, and this happens to women.
Ive seen it first hand.
You’d be surprised how many peoples profile pics are from years ago before they founded their companies. They were skinnier and hotter then. Then they founded a company.
And they are not looking so good now.
I say all this not to beat up on people and be cruel. Rather I suggest a better approach and mindset
You are a BETTER Founder when you are HEALTHY.
If you do a cursory search of startups and survivability, the numbers are grim.
About 62% of seed funded startups fail.
Roughly 15% make it to Series B.
At best, 1% make it to the hallowed “Unicorn” status valued at $1 Billion.
The odds are not in your favor. What determines success?
All other factors being equal, its the Founder(s) and their ability to execute, lead, adapt, and drive the company towards a successful outcome.
The following is a statement of truth that I dont believe can be argued with:
No one has peak cognitive abilities in an inflamed, overweight, stressed, chronically underslept state.
“Im at my best when my body looks like shit”
This is not real.
However, we must account for the reality that the “Founder” life of attempting to start a moonshot company, dedicating months and years of your life to exponential outcome, no one does this because they care about exemplifying health.
Health is a tertiary priority, if that.
So how does a Founder Stay Healthy then?
Before I share the solution, I must credit the Scott Adams book “How to Reframe your Brain”.
The answer starts with a reframe of Health
Most founders treat health as a distant priority. Its a side hustle project, something that is probably important, but also distracting.
And priorities inevitably compete. When you’re closing a round or shipping before a deadline, or struggling through a construction phase, your immediate goal is NOT “is this healthy”. Deadlines are real. Missing a workout is not the end of the world.
I am telling you to stop treating health as a PERSONAL priority.
Start treating it as COMPANY infrastructure.
I am dead serious about this. I dont care how cringe it is or if it sounds like Linkedin advice.
Your body and mind is at the same if not greater level of importance as getting funded, running payroll, finding customers, and making sure your team executes.
You are the Keyman to everything. Your physical and mental wellness is the foundation every decision runs on. When the foundation degrades, everything built on top of it degrades with it.
Your judgment. Your energy. Your ability to think clearly.
Every unhealthy founder I’ve met is running on at least one of these lines. Read them and find yours.
Six lies founders tell themselves about health
1. Health is a side project I’ll get to after this quarter/raise/phase…
Your body is the platform the company runs on. Strategy, sales, every hard call executes on top of your biology. Shoddy hardware means downtime, and there is no version of the company that keeps running while the founder is down.
2. I’m stealing time from the company when I go workout.
You’re maintaining the one asset the company cannot replace or hire around. You would call it negligence if an engineer skipped maintenance on critical systems or equipment until it failed. You are the equipment. Treat the 45 minutes as work.
3. Real founders grind through exhaustion.
Sometimes you will need to grind, no question. But if your company only survives when you’re running yourself into the ground, you didn’t build a company. You built a trap with you inside it. The grind you’re proud of is negative feedback. It shows you exactly where you failed to delegate, automate, or say no. Constant heroics are evidence your system is broken.
4. Sleep is negotiable
Again, I am not prescribing that you must sleep 7-8 hours a night and have perfect sleep scores. Fuck the devices honestly.
BUT, sleep debt produces worse judgment, slower thinking, and a shorter temper, which means every all-nighter raises the odds you make the one decision that sinks you. There are periods of time when all nighters or very long days are necessary, but you dont want that to become the Modus operandi. Its something to deploy when needed, as needed.
Bad sleep leads to worse resistance to stress, which then creates more internal stress, which worsens sleep, and then you become the person who goes to bed tired, sleeps poorly, wakes up tired, runs tired, and now youre in a hormonal and metabolic tailspin.
5. Food or booze is the reward after a brutal day
Food is fuel. The brutal day is exactly when you can least afford to run the machine on garbage. Eat for the next four hours of output. Let the reward meal be the exception you choose on purpose, not the default you reach for at 11pm because your willpower is spent.
6. Taking care of myself is selfish.
Backwards. Your investors, your team, and your family did not back a one-time burn. They backed your judgment over years. Letting yourself decay is the betrayal.
Throw out the lies and the system underneath is simple.
The Founder Health Infrastructure Plan
Forget the influencer morning routine bullshit. That is health as performance art, and you don’t have time for theater.
Here is what to do
1. Delegate your health management
A few months in, I signed up for Velocity health. They assigned me a health coach. That coach is basically my chief health officer. She doesn’t write my workouts, but she checks in weekly to remind me to get bloodwork done, followup on labs, and keep me accountable long term.
If I were more a more normal, less fit patient, I’d have the option of working with a strength and conditioning coach and nutritionist if I needed one. If I need to talk to a doctor asap, I can do that as well.
Why would a health coach need a heath coach?
Because I dont want to think about it. I dont have time. Someone else can run my calendar, assess my labs, and be the voice of medical reason and encouragement.
The same way you delegate legal to lawyers and accounting to a CPA, do so with your health management. Get comprehensive bloodwork twice a year. Hormones, inflammatory markers, metabolic panel, the full picture, not the 8-marker physical your insurance covers. Have someone competent read it and adjust. Concierge and performance medicine exists precisely for men whose time is worth more than the cost of the service.
Founders who spends $300K a year on engineers and $0 on the biological system running the company have their priorities inverted.
2. Put your workouts on your calendar
I am very favorable to the idea that training intensity matters more than anything else, even diet and recovery. If you train hard weekly and can maintain benchmarks in strength, you’ll be health ENOUGH.
Your workout blocks get the same status as your investor meetings. If something has to move, you reschedule it on purpose. Dont treat training as optional.
3. Get your food on autopilot
I dont give a damn if you order doordash every day, thats on you. What I would tell you:
-eat protein at every meal
-Dont feed on sugary bullshit
-Dont wait until the very end of the day to eat
THATS IT. That braindead simple. Protein, dont eat fucking treats as snack, and dont wait all day and binge eat.
4. Cap the two founder drugs: caffeine and alcohol. Stop with the Caffeine at 2-3pm.
Cap Alcohol caps at 2 to 3 drinks a week, ideally zero during a sprint. Dont get caught on the caffeine and booze doom loop. Caffeine to override exhaustion in the morning. Alcohol to override stress at night. You will end up carrying around the Founder 50.
5. Walk as much as you can. Take calls walking. Walk after meals to blunt glucose spikes. Put the midday or morning, or evening walk on the calendar. Block it out.
Walk to clear your head and think. 80000 steps, 10k steps, whatever, the number doesnt matter so much as you not being stuck inside for 12 sedentary hours between bed, card, desk, car, couch, and then bed again. Walking is the cheapest intervention in all of health and the one founders skip first.
6. Sleep ENOUGH, and stop stressing over a lack of sleep-I am giving you permission to throw away your apple watch or whoop, and not give a fuck about perfect sleep scores. Sometimes we will be tired, thats fine. So long as you can hit 5-6 hours a night at least, you
7. Resiliency to Stress matters more than eliminating all stress-Running a startup is stressful, without question. The approach then is to improve your resiliency, eliminate excess stress through smart decision making (like FIRING bad hires, tightening your decision loops), and doing what YOU need to do to RELAX your nervous system. Whether thats sauna cold plunge meditation nature walks a psychiatrist an executive coach walking your dog playing videos games…IT DOESNT MATTER, DO WHAT RELAXES YOU AND GIVES YOU A BREAK.
A startup is a bet that you can sustain elite output for 7 to 10 years.
Not 18 months. Even the most hallowed unicorns in venture capital rarely hit it big in year 1. You are looking at 2-4+ years before the big breakthough. You must last all of that and beyond. Startup world is littered with companies and founders burned out, got divorced, were making desperate decisions with degraded judgment, and ended up needing a sabbatical to recover.
Your company’s most important asset doesn’t appear on the cap table. It’s your brain and body.
Treat it like the infrastructure it is. Then go build the company.
