(Tech) Startup stress

(𝐓𝐞𝐜𝐡) 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐮𝐩 𝐒𝐭𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐬…

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐛𝐮𝐢𝐥𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚 (𝐭𝐞𝐜𝐡) 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐮𝐩…

Last night I joined the Polish Tech Night at Venture Café in Berlin. An inspiring evening where founders pitched their innovations to investors and venture capital firms. As someone who spent eighteen years in the high-tech industry, I immediately felt at home.

The room was filled with exciting ideas. Medical technology, deep tech, breakthrough innovations that have the potential to change the world.

Yet beneath all that excitement, I could feel something else.

The pressure. The pressure every founder knows. The pressure of finding people willing to invest millions in your vision.

Most founders begin with a deeply personal dream. In the early days, you can hide behind the technology. Behind the product. Behind the innovation.

But as your company grows, everything changes. Suddenly, you become the face of the business.

You carry the responsibility. For your team. For your investors. For the future of the company.

You give everything you’ve got, believing that life will finally become easier once the funding arrives.

But often, that’s exactly when the real pressure begins.

Now your investors are looking at you. Before you know it, you’re working hard to keep everyone else happy. The dream that once belonged to you slowly turns into endless meetings, constant firefighting, and an ever-growing list of expectations. Meanwhile, your wife and children slowly begin to build a life that no longer includes you as much as it should.

Before you realize it, you’re living a life that no longer feels like your own.

It’s a story I hear time and time again from the men sitting around my campfire. 🔥

But it doesn’t have to be that way.You always have a choice. No matter how much responsibility you carry.

Every single day, you get to choose yourself again. To remember that you are the leader of your own life. Not your investors. Not your company. Not your wife. Not your family.

The real challenge is having the courage to keep following your own inner compass, no matter how much pressure rests on your shoulders.

It starts with checking in with yourself every day. Making space to listen to your own inner voice.

Because when you’re deeply connected to yourself, you no longer have to chase people or constantly prove yourself. The right people find you. And the things you were desperately trying to control simply resolve themselves.

Thank you, Venture Café, for creating such an inspiring evening.

And to every founder I met last night… I wish you the courage to build not only a successful company, but a life that still feels like your own.

🔥 Michel