Raising money fucked me up

Reactions to the Post & Founder Self-Reflection

• Many readers found the essay impressive rather than alarming, seeing deep self-reflection as a positive signal in a founder rather than a sign the investment was wasted.
• Several say any founder who never has these doubts is either lying or headed for a worse crash later.
• Multiple comments emphasize the value of therapy, coaching, and good mentors; the author notes they use these and are now in a much better mental state.

Pressure, Expectations, and Identity

• A recurring theme is that most of the pressure described is internally generated: investors in the story aren’t actually demanding hypergrowth.
• Commenters tie this to “wearing the founder costume” or “tech founder persona”: doing things that look like what a founder should do, rather than what actually fits the person or business.
• Others generalize this to identity and anxiety: fear of disappointing others, clinging to the fantasy of “I could have been X,” and confusing worry with one’s core self.
• Parenting analogies appear: overpraising kids’ traits (“you’re so smart”) can create fragile identities similar to what the author went through.

VC vs Bootstrapping & Mental Health

• Several founders say they avoid raising precisely because they know it would mess with their heads in similar ways.
• A strong anti-VC thread argues: only raise when absolutely necessary, incentives are misaligned, money doesn’t magically fix distribution, and founders often overestimate investor help.
• Counterpoints note there are domains where upfront capital and regulation make raising reasonable, and that customers—not investors—are the best external feedback.
• Bootstrapping is framed as psychologically different: slower, but with optionality (consulting, freelancing), albeit with its own long-term “am I wasting my life?” anxiety.

Comparison, Growth, and “Bets”

• Many relate to toxic comparison: seeing “$1M ARR in a month” headlines and feeling inadequate, despite knowing these stories are rare or exaggerated.
• Some defend slow growth as underrated and incompatible with classic VC expectations. “Slow burn startups” are suggested as an alternative model.
• A long subthread uses poker and expected value as a metaphor for startup risk: life is about probabilistic bets, but unlike poker, real-world odds are unknown and often structurally “rigged,” especially when others start with massive advantages.